Since its rebirth, Doctor Who has made regular use of the bittersweet finale, always mindful to stab you in the front just as its patting you on the back. Huge, as in sizably huge, threats tend to demand great emotional sacrifice in kind. We can’t save the world without losing Rose, the Master, the Ponds, or even a Doctor or two.
The Eleventh Doctor’s reign flipped that formula, reveling in victory, saving everyone with a speech and a smirk, and demonstrating that getting backed into a corner just made the Doctor all that more clever. This was a man who, before he departed, even figured out a way to undo his greatest sacrifice.
With the first season of the Twelfth Doctor now concluded, we can say with certainty that sacrifice is once again a companion on his journey. But there is no joy in “Death in Heaven”s return to the bittersweet. Because there’s nothing sweet for us to take away.
We’ve seen Daleks turn our own planet into slag but somehow nothing on Doctor Who has seemed quite as brutal as the events in “Death in Heaven.” There’s a cruel edge to the storyline, one that I think is only somewhat warranted by the presence of the Master. We expect death, destruction, and a distinct lack of honor to what the Master says and does, but Moffat’s script seemed to go out of its way at points to really grind that in. To, in essence, promise something wonderful specifically to the viewer, and then snatch that possibility away.
This unsettling feeling really comes into clarity with Osgood’s death. Early on in the episode we see the meek fandom stand-in be brave and think beyond herself in thwarting the Master. She still adorns herself in the scraps of the Doctor’s history and nervously defends that approach, but that she defends this at all feels triumphant. Plus, her intelligence is obviously a credit to UNIT since she’s out there on the front. The Doctor teasingly recognizes this as well, and suddenly he’s muttering “All of time and space. Keep that in mind.” And a million Tumblr accounts combust with the possibility of Osgood getting to actually travel with the Doctor.
Then she’s killed by the Master, taunted for being too foolish to get close to Time Lord business as her glasses are noticeably ground into the floor. And yes, that’s in character for this incarnation of the Master but damn, Moffat, that is ice cold.
At first, I darkly respected Moffat for essentially killing the puppy. Osgood is a tertiary character we would identify with more readily than even Clara or Danny, so the opportunity to kill her would give the story quite an impact without derailing anything. And that’s exactly what I felt. Wow is the Master entertaining to watch but make her pay, Doctor. Rally with fire and anger. Burn at the center of time like you ought.
That, as we saw, doesn’t happen. Mostly the set just tosses him and the Master around while the phone rings and we strain to hear what should be a tense, emotional scene. Then, as if we weren’t already convinced of the Master’s evil, the episode tosses Kate Lethbridge-Stuart, heir apparent to one of the most beloved companions in the show’s history, out of an airplane.
All while Clara is on the phone with the Doctor asking how she can essentially kill ZombieCyberDanny’s soul.
“Death in Heaven” hurts, you guys.
And maybe that was a larger thematic point that Moffat was trying to make through the tone of this episode and the season at large; that Capaldi’s Doctor is going to be dark and his life is going to be hurtful and either you want to watch that or you don’t. That this is a Doctor that might be far closer to reality than you would like. Imbibe at your own risk.
But if that is the lesson we’re supposed to take away from this season then I don’t at all feel like it’s been realized through the Doctor, but rather through Clara. Where “Death in Heaven” as a whole is a disappointing, uneven episode, Clara and Danny’s emotional arcs remain blessedly solid. While the Master and the Doctor’s storylines struggle to approach one another, Clara and Danny bring their arcs throughout this season to an end that, even in victory, feels powerfully, properly bittersweet.
It begins before the credits themselves do, with Clara outright claiming that she’s the Doctor. It’s a wonderfully literal twist on the journey she’s been on this season, growing from companion into Doctor, having to repeatedly make the hard choices and forgive the unforgivable. It resonates nicely with her actions at the beginning of “Dark Water,” as well. We’ve seen her hijack the Doctor for her own desires. Now she’s taken on his name and is using his reputation to stave off death in the same manner that we’ve seen him do many times before. The fiction of Clara as the Doctor has never been as close to reality as it is in this episode, and even the fiction of the show’s credits bow to this new reality, placing her name first and showing us her face instead of Capaldi’s.
It also introduces a much-needed tension to the episode that the Master’s murder spree simply can’t create. Clara is the Doctor now, but as we all know, the Doctor is ever destined to lose those he cares about most. And eventually this culminates in the episode’s very, very, very best scene, with Clara pointing the sonic at her true love’s heart, his dead face pleading with her to finish him.
Clara knows that it has to be her. Despite the Doctor’s pleas that Clara can’t switch off Danny’s feelings, it’s the only way to allow Danny to access the Cybermen’s hive mind and make their ultimate plans known to the Doctor. Danny, as ever, sees right through the Doctor’s nobility. Those grand speeches about the sanctity of Danny’s life melt away when the Doctor needs Danny to die for the greater good. And although Danny is right about the Doctor—has always been right about the Doctor—he continually chooses to forget an important fact, namely that Clara is also the Doctor. She makes the choice, the sacrifice, that she knows will win the day. And so this season of Doctor Who concludes with Clara, not the Doctor, sacrificing the heart of those closest to her. It is the ultimate endpoint of her time with the Doctor. All of time…all of space…there is nothing more that he can show her.
It’s funny, but the person whom the Doctor brings the best out of is the person who insisted on being the furthest from this incarnation of the Doctor: Danny. (He’s the DoctorDanny! …sorry.) Here is a soldier turned schoolteacher, the very kind of small life that the Doctor used to rejoice in the presence of, who ends up saving the entirety of humanity in a blaze of honesty. Here is a man who never tried to dig in his heels when he found out just how impossible his girl was, rather, he supported and loved her, even when it killed him. (And it did kill him.)
And ultimately it was that devotion that saved the day. Was this what the Doctor sensed when the Master gave him control of her Cyber army? Did seeing Danny sacrifice himself jolt him into a determination to be the man who inspires that kind of action? Was Danny the actual moment of truth for the Doctor?
Because it sure didn’t seem to be anything the Master actually did, regardless of how much weight the episode’s plot gave her actions. While I found “Death in Heaven” quite satisfying in regards to how it closed out the relationship between Clara, the Doctor, and Danny, I found it abysmally lacking in the relationship between the Master and the Doctor.
And it wasn’t that Michelle Gomez wasn’t giving it her very best, either. In fact, her charisma made the absence of story between the two characters all the more glaring. Here was a loony with deep emotional ties to our main character, heart on her sleeve, and here was a Doctor who barely got any time to slow down and chat with her face to face. It seemed like every time they were in the same area, the Doctor was remembering another thing he forgot to ask her.
Subsequently, the Master’s motivations didn’t really have any impact if you didn’t know the history between the two characters. For the Master to want to the Doctor to see that he’s just like her makes sense within that context, but that context doesn’t exist within this episode or “Dark Water.” Oddly enough, the Master’s plot seems more in keeping with the events of “The End of Time” or “The Sound of Drums.” Sure, having the Master admire the Doctor as the leader of an army, the president of Earth, and so on plays well into this incarnation’s hatred of soldiers and his own skills as a general, but that admiration comes out of nowhere.
The Master’s choice of pairing Clara up with the Doctor has the same effect. Something something about a control freak being paired with him, in a way that was designed to, I guess, bring out the general in the Doctor and make him more like the Master? Again, this comes out of nowhere. If anything, the Doctor has become more like himself as the season has worn on.
Despite how little sense the Master’s plan makes in these proceedings, Gomez was still a lot of fun to watch, and a worthy adversary for Capaldi. Which is why, and here we come back to how “Death in Heaven” piled on the bitter and forgot to add in the sweet, it was maddening to see the Master get disintegrated.
Gosh, if only there was some character known for truly challenging the Doctor, who forces him to extremes and makes him grow and solidify as a character. And who we didn’t just disintegrate. Oh well. Guess the opportunity to further explore that is gone. Back to not looking for Gallifrey.
There’s something to be said here about the Doctor’s choices and having to live with the consequences of his actions, but I’m not sure “Death in Heaven” really intends that. You could justify the Master’s death by saying that, well, the Doctor seemed like he was going to kill her anyway, for one, and if he didn’t actually want the Master dead then he wouldn’t have supported the military-industrial complex that produced the Brigadier and UNIT et al. And maybe there’s a larger point there. That the Doctor can’t stop being a general and this is why he hates this aspect of himself so much, because now it’s cost him the one chance he had at finding his home.
You wish the Master had been around to witness the Doctor’s last sitdown with Clara, because even though the Doctor doesn’t want to steamroll over the universe with a Cyber Army by his side, he has no qualms with crafting lies that are just as big, if not bigger, than the ones that the Master tells. They are alike in this sense, that much is certain. The Doctor lies, the Master lies, and Clara as the Doctor lies right along with them.
Because in the end this is the only way any of them can move forward. The Master didn’t even know what to do with herself without the prospect of hiding herself from the Doctor. Clara can’t bear to tell the Doctor that Danny didn’t cheat death, and the Doctor can’t bear to tell her that his people are still gone and that he’s more alone than ever before.
So they lie to each other, and life moves on, but no one gets what they want.
Thoughts:
- How weird was it to see Matt Smith as the Doctor in that flashback? I love when the show does that. Makes you realize that you think of the new guy as the definitive Doctor now.
- So did Zygon Osgood die or Real Osgood? Real Osgood needed the inhaler…or did they both need it by the end of “The Day of the Doctor”?
- God but this was a bleak episode. Even with the fun James Bond dive the Doctor made towards the TARDIS.
- So…is Santa essentially going to tally the Doctor’s entire life to determine whether he’s on the naughty or nice list? Nick Frost, I like you, but that sounds like a thankless task.
- Children and grandchildren he assumes are all dead? BLEAK. EPISODE.
- So, despite the stumble of this season’s finale, this has been one of the most interesting and substantive runs of Doctor Who that I’ve watched in (what feels like) a long time. Is it the fleshing out of Clara? The nicely handled Danny subplot? Capaldi’s acting chops? It’s probably all of these and then some. It’s even more of an exciting season for me when I think about how a Doctor’s first season tends to be their shakiest, and how the characterization gets even more solid in seasons to come. The thought of an even more cohesive Twelfth Doctor next year is exciting, and Capaldi and Moffat and company have already far exceeded my expectations this year.
- THE DOCTOR WILL RETURN IN…whatever’s going on here:
Chris Lough has found watching and writing about this year’s season of Doctor Who extravagantly rewarding, moon dragons and all.
I think you missed the part where Kate turned out to be alive… because the Cyberman Brigadier saved her. And the Doctor saluted him at last. And I started crying. Okay, you didn’t see that last part, but it happened. Oh, and it’s happening again right now.
Another thing I noticed: When Master Missy disintegrated Osgood and the others, they vanished in puffs of red. When the Doctor used the weapon on Missy, she vanished in a puff of blue. I’m thinking transmat. Did Missy have a failsafe in the device? Or did the Doctor lie to Clara again?
EDIT: Wait a minute, io9’s review says that it was actually Cyber-Brig who disintegrated Missy so the Doctor didn’t have to. On reflection, I did briefly wonder if that’s what had happened, but then I started crying so I forgot.
In the opening, I figured that Clara was bluffing about being the Doctor… but it was a credible enough bluff that Moffat had me genuinely wondering for a while, especially with that fakeout credits sequence swapping Coleman for Capaldi. It seems like the kind of twist Moffat might’ve actually pulled. Although it doesn’t really hold up to analysis when considering Clara’s whole history.
Yeah, the Brigadier shot the Master. Saving the Doctor’s soul, as it were. Each of the endings in this episode hit me right in the feels.
But I doubt the Master is gone for good.
I’m with @2. This episode was full of feels for me. I have never really bought into Danny Pink as somebody I’m supposed to care about, but seeing Clara clutching him was incredibly touching. And the Doctor saluting the Brigadier, and even Missy’s death (?)…goodness, I was on the edge of my seat the entire episode. Yes, it was bleak, but I was never a fan of the frolicky nature of Matt Smith’s reign. This is serious, dark Doctor Who. I like it this way.
And Michelle Gomez’s performance was absolutely stellar. Right on the money. We hadn’t seen enough of her until last week to really judge whether she’s been a good Master, but now that the reveal is done, she’s utterly bananas and it’s perfect.
Last week I posted (as a non-registered alias) that I thought Clara was pregnant. Didn’t get to see the reveal on that, but there were multiple times I was sure she was going to tell Danny, or the Doctor… She has 1 more episode left, maybe that’s the feel good part of Christmas?
Cyber-Brig and the salute, and the wonderful photo/painting of him in the plane… lots of eye-watering dust swirling around during those scenes. And when the coordinates were proven fake and the Doctor took it out on the TARDIS… that hurt. Of all the wrongs committed, that just felt so unnatural.
So is Clara actually pregnant now because that future descdent of hers did not look like a cyberman?
@3 I have to admit…I felt Danny since his first episode. As a veteran I totally got what he was saying (or maybe I was projecting) when he tell the Dr…”Yes SIR!”. At first, I was concerned that Danny was going to be another version of Rory, especially tonight, but I grew to love Danny charachter on his own. The Doctor’s relationship with his companions has been highlighted before (The Master, The Dahleks…etc) Danny was able to provide a different view on this concept… :-)
@1. Nah, I caught that and originally had a paragraph in the review about the Brig disintegrating the Master and saving his daughter but I snipped it for clarity. It was a tangent about how I felt what the Brig doing that was a cop-out and why did the episode take the decision out of its main character’s hands and diminishment and etc. etc. etc. It got off-track really quickly.
The Master BETTER be alive. I’m so mad they snuffed her just as she was getting started.
Believe me that it pains me to say this. I consider myself an articulate person, however –
I literally can’t even.
Here’s how easy it is for the Mistress to have survived:
1) We’ve seen her transmat/teleport already, earlier in the same episode, with a blue-white dematerialization.
2) We’ve seen the Master use powerful pawns like the Cybermen many times in the past. The Master is always prepared for treachery from his flunkies.
3) Of course the Mistress would have prepared a defense against Cyber weaponry. Wouldn’t you, if you were a super-genius attempting to boss around a bunch of A.I.s, each of whom has a hair trigger and leathal weaponry?
4) Failsafe: should the Mistress be struck by a Cyber-blast, her transmat activates automatically, returning her to her TARDIS.
5) And now she’s crying, and fuming, and cursing. Because she had done it: she had engineered an emotional trap for the Doctor so devastating that he was about to go all Killing Joke on her, actually putting her out of her psychotic misery and “proving” that the two of them were not so different in the process. But she’s still alive, and still mad, all because her own paranoid genius engineered an escape she would have gladly avoided in exchange for a meaningful death half a moment later…
First – I hated this episode. Hate it hate it hate it.
second – I wonder if Missy was telling the truth about gallifrey. I mean – it could be right “there”, but in it’s pocket universe.
Next to zero emotional response for me, aside from the Brigadier’s appearance. Clara and Danny’s relationship was tenuous at best, as was the season long implication that The Doctor might not be a good man – as a result, I was not emotionally invested in this series in the least. I’m dissapointed that I was correct in my predictions, specifically that the morally charged events of the series transpired because Missy was lonely, and was trying to break The Doctor’s spirit in order to get the Valeyard to come out and play. The resolution was hidden in plain sight – in the bad writing I’ve been annoyingly, relentlessly, complaining about for months – that was the key to my unravelling the plot before Death in Heaven aired. Mark my words – a corrupt doctor is the wrong means of making this an updated, gritty series. He’s coming.
I really hope the Valyard isn’t coming. Missy is not dead the Master is never permanantly dead. This episode hurt I don’t like it when it hurts. I hope the Xmas special is lighter. I wonder what’s wrong with Gallefrey or did the Master lie again? I liked Kate and the tie in with the Brigadier it made happy. I’m glad Kate is still alive but really sad Osgood is dead. Never let the Master play with your friends or toys. He/She breaks just for fun to make people cry. @5 mentioned Clara might be pregnant and that works for me as a tie up to her story and Oswalds. Nick Frost is St. Nick I can’t wait to see what he brings for Xmas besides beer . I can’t wait for next season even if the end of this one made me sad.
This season was just awful.
I enjoyed previous Moffat seasons to some degree and thought the naysayers just disliked him for all the little changes he made, but this one was so tedious, devoid of anything interesting and full of self-indulgent crappy writing that its hard to keep invested at all. And I had such hopes for Peter Capaldi.
This isn’t Doctor Who, this is baby’s first attempt at Doctor Who self-analysis and grim’n gritty, and it really comes of as both utterly ridiculous and tepid
@1: The Cyber-Brig also made me cry. With anger. It just felt so wrong on so many levels I can’t even… just no. That hurt, but not in a “this is so sad story” way, but in “this is so badly written, no,” way.
And are we supposed to believe that of all dead people only two (Danny and Brigadier) didn’t hit the “delete” button? As if they are the only ones who have girlfriend/family they love?
Osgood was previously written as a clever character. Intelligent. You don’t get to UNIT unless you’re clever, right? So how could she not have seen the obvious trap?
Clara is obviously pregnant. The grandson she met earlier and looked just like Danny is a proof.
Master/Missy is not dead. I believed him to be dead once and I’m not making the same mistake again.
In the short documentary accompanying the episode, Stephen Moffat spoke of how much he liked the fact that everytime the Anthony Ainley Master got killed, he would reappear with no explanation other than ‘I escaped’. So the Mistress will be back.
This was a hell of a harsh episode. While there are some parts that didn’t make much sense (Why raise the dead as Cybermen if the rains are just going to fall again and kill the living? Why not convert the living along with the dead when the rain fell the first time? How did the kid Danny killed come back in his original body?), it was also surprisingly nasty, especially Osgood’s death, dashing any hopes I had of her becoming a companion. Cyber-Brigadier brought a tear to my eye, I admit it, as did the Doctor finally saluting him — though I would also have given them points for a post-credits stinger with one lone Cyberman mysteriously stuck somewhere in Peru. I love Kate Stewart, and it annoys me that they keep bringing her into an episode and then shoving her aside — or out of a plane, or sticking her at the negotiation table — when they have nothing more for her to do. I was fairly sure the Master teleported, since it looked similar to when she did that earlier, and nothing like either the disintegrator ray or the much more explosive Cyber-weaponry. I’m on board with the “transmat failsafe” theory.
The last ten minutes or so had some serious emotional weight. I liked that the Doctor and Clara part ways with a huge mutual lie, which seemed an inevitability but still hurt. And the Doctor’s breakdown at the end was just heart-wrenching.
I’d say it’s because the Mistress was creating a new breed of Cybermen. She had to bring the first generation to maturity before they were ready to “pollinate.”
Err, block transfer computation?
I saw a post elsewhere (livejournal!) that interpreted the going to see Galifrey part as that he found it, but Missy had cyber-ized it before coming back to Earth. That makes some sense to me (start at home, hurt the Doctor even more), but is even bleaker than him just not finding it.
Definitely more than a few teary moments. The Brigadier! The salute! Osgood! (Boo! The ultimate fangirl doesn’t get a ride on the TARDIS. Despite the declaration that this season was about the loyal fans, Moffat says “screw you” by killing this stand-in for the fans. ) Danny saving the boy, not himself! (Boo! Very Danny, but no happiness for him and Clara.) The Cyberman weapon Kate Lethbridge-Stuart
mentions. Very TORCHWOODy. (I miss Captain Jack and his team, although not the abysmal writing. )
Beyond the obvious stupid plot and worldbuilding elements, my question is how do short people (through human history everyone was shorter than the average Cyberman until the modern world), children, and babies become so tall they can fit into the Cyberman suit? If someone was eaten by a lion, does the lion poop reform into the person’s body?
When the rain fell, did Missy say, “To your scattered bodies, go!” (John Donne, not PJ Farmer.)
Also, there is a real afterlife in this WHO universe despite what TORCHWOOD said on the subject.
The Christmas special looks like a tribute/rip-off of IT.
I am glad the series worked for some watchers. I got off on the wrong foot with it despite looking forward to Capaldi’s Doctor and was never really won back enough for the end to make an emotional impact.
What makes you say that? If anything, this episode came within a hair’s breadth of stating outright that all our beliefs in the afterlife down through history were just scams perpetuated by the Mistress, a front for the reality of the Gallifreyan Matrix drive uploading the minds of the dead.
@20: I think the people posing with the Cybermen were all UNIT agents in disguise, feigning unconcern to get close.
Anyway, I guess it was inevitable that an actor named Nick Frost would end up playing Santa Claus at some point in his career. (Or do they still call him Father Christmas in the UK?)
This episode was stupid and they’re wasting Capaldi’s talents. (Though it was nice to finally see that manic grin! At least I think that was the first time we saw it.)
I’m sorry, I cannot buy every nation on Earth making the Doctor President. That’s not even how Presidents work!
Also I know it’s a bit much to expect the Doctor to put the Master in bondage gear like the Master did to him, especially since she’s female now, but come on! Handcuffs? HANDCUFFS?
I suppose it says a lot that this was not the worst of all the finales.
Why does Moffat not like ensemble casts anyway? This is the third or fourth finale in a row where less than six people saved the world. I know the point is to focus on characters, but a part of stories I find appealing is characters bouncing off each other, and they really don’t do that in Moffat finales. It also makes the world seem very small.
I was among those who found the previous episode’s “big reveal” that Missy was the Master disappointingly anticlimactic. This episode simply confirmed that. You could have had a perfectly interesting Cyberman invasion story, with the Cybermen raising the dead this time, with no need for the Master’s presence. Even the deads’ consciousness being uploaded into the Nethersphere didn’t need a Time Lord — on Earth, in 2014, there’s already serious speculation about how we might some day be able to upload our thoughts, memories, consciousness, etc. into the cloud, so a civilization slightly more advanced than ours could have done this, it wasn’t necessary to have a civilization millions (or hundreds of millions) of years more advanced. The Cybermen themselves could probably do it.
The ep would have had to redo the ending somewhat, but the Doctor could still have lied to Clara about having found Gallifrey, just to persuade her that their journeys were over.
And the whole thing was a just a plot by the Master to show the Doctor that they’re not that different? A sorry overused cliche, the villain telling the hero, “We’re not so different after all, you and I.” Please, we’ve seen enough of this sort of thing.
I also don’t know if it was the acting or the writing, but this incarnation of the Master was thoroughy repellent, malevolent without being in the least bit interesting. Especially after her murders of Osgood and Kate, I found myself agreeing with Clara at the end that she had to be killed to be stopped. (I was really angry at the two of them getting killed — yes, Kate survives, but Osgood — wow.) I’m probably alone in hoping that the Cyberman-Brigadier did actually kill her for good — the Master dying at the Brigadier’s hands would be a suitable ending. Of course, we know the Master somehow never dies, so my only hope is that the next incarnation is written with more complexity and layers rather than being a one-dimensional cartoonish villain.
Speaking of Cyberman-Brigadier, I had tears and laughed at the same time. Nice callback to the classic series.
The Danny-Clara stuff worked for me, as did Danny’s sacrifice at the end, sending back the boy he’d killed. The Doctor’s astonishment at being appointed President of Earth was priceless, and I loved the look on his face at the end when Santa Claus barges into the TARDIS. And of course, his anger and frustration when he sees that Gallifrey isn’t where the Master said it was.
So in sum, I thought the Cyberman story could have stood on its own, and the Master was completely unnecessary for a good story.
@21 That portal that appeared in Clara’s apartment is a dang good indication that there is an afterlife. Otherwise, where are Danny and the little boy since they were blown to bits stopping the second rain? And, if there isn’t an afterlife, where would the little boy have been teleported from?
I really liked the first part of this. It was very well paced. This second part however, was very rushed. They had too many things they were trying to do. In retrospect especially, it feels like they had a list of things to check off. Consider, the Doctor doesn’t do one single thing as President of the Earth. And oddly he doesn’t warn anyone about the Master and acts like some handcuffs and two guards are enough to hold Missy. I also felt like how Cybermen and emotion are being handled is a bit arbitrary.
I’m starting to really dislike Clara — and I want to like her, but the writing for her hasn’t been very good. Her “do as you’re told” line in this episode didn’t come off very well. Also her lying at the end just seemed stupid. Pink is stuck somewhere far away and the Doctor has the Tardis — so why not get the Doctor to help?
I’m starting to wonder if the writing demands from his and Sherlock are a bit too much for Moffat. He seemed to do really great single shot episodes a couple times or so a year. But I feel like his writing for Doctor Who has been getting worse each season since he starting running the show.
It seems like a lot of people (including me, was Gallifrey there or not?) are missing key points of this episode, which is a pretty solid condemnation of the writing.
Also, when did UNIT’s motto become “We are helping! We are helping!”? I mean, handing the earth over to the Doctor is something we’d think is a good idea, but you’d think UNIT would know better than to joggle the Doctor’s elbow. Not that they really do anything aside from be thematically significant in handing an army over to the Doctor and give opportunities for the Master to kill people we like.
The episode is very clear that Gallifrey is not there. There is only blackness outside the TARDIS doors, no planet. Nothingness.
Clara didn’t get the Doctor to try to rescue Danny at the end, because that’s what she tried to do in the beginning – and there was only one chance at cheating death with the Cyber bracelet, and Danny chose to use it for the Afghan boy, which was a fittingly heroic end for him. It certainly wasn’t “boring” like being hit by a car.
@24: The portal was opened by the Mistress’s wrist control, which the Doctor gave to Cyber-Danny. The control was for the Nethersphere, i.e. the Gallifreyan Matrix drive. Danny and the boy both had their consciousnesses uploaded into the Nethersphere, and the Mistress’s control bracelet allowed a one-time passage out of that mainframe. This was all explained in dialogue. Surely you don’t think that a remote control created by an evil mastermind with the specific purpose of interfacing with her fake Heaven could somehow enable access to the real thing??
@25: I think the Doctor not doing anything as President is the whole point. The Earth offered him absolute power, and he didn’t act on it. And that presaged his rejection of the absolute power that the Mistress offered him with the Cyber army. The theme throughout is that people were trying to push him into accepting power over them, but he resisted the temptation, because that’s just not who he is.
It was bleak, wasn’t it? But I still related to it. As to Missy – she’ll be back, The Master never dies. It’s traditional.
The most amazing moment for me was the saving of Kate Stewart. When I saw the Brig’s portrait I said to myself, ‘He’s dead. I wonder if he’ll be a cyberman now.’ But it didn’t occur to me that he might save his daughter’s life. It was a wonderful moment, as was the Doctor’s salute.
@29 I didn’t think it was clear where the portal was from. If it was to the Netherverse then there’s still no reason not to engage the Doctor for help. As a Time Lord he is familiar with the technology.
You missed my point about the Doctor being President. They don’t give him any time or pressure to make any decisions at all. So the fact that he makes none doesn’t mean anything. That’s part of how this 2nd part is rushed. He doesn’t have a lot of development with Missy for this reason as well — they keep dealing with other plot issues at the same time. The first episode was paced really well and gave a proper amount of time to its themes and concepts. The second part did not do this and the story suffers for it a lot — and I say that even though I enjoyed it. It just could have been a lot better if they cut out 10-20 minutes of extraneous crap and spent that on what they already had.
Heck, I don’t think the President of Earth thing really has much of a point to it. It undercuts the end where the Doctor has control of the Cybermen — he already faced a similar level of responsibility (which the episode gave zero time to explore other than for a cheap joke). Seems to me it would have been better if the Doctor had been frustrated by people not listening to him and was then given the Cybermen army. The whole President of Earth thing doesn’t really do anything for the episode or the themes being brought up. It’s an example of something that drags the story down rather than lifting it up, imho.
Though to be fair, there are certainly different ways you could have taken the 2nd part that could have kept that and used it to emphasize something else. Like I said that’s the problem — too much going on and too little time to explore much of it.
@31: It was extremely clear that the portal was opened by the wrist control bracelet that Missy gave the Doctor and the Doctor gave to Danny. The whole reason Danny couldn’t come back is that the bracelet only allowed one person to make one trip. This was explained in dialogue at the time, and we were shown a close-up on the bracelet after the boy was sent through and the portal closed. So there’s no ambiguity here.
Danny gets on my nerves – am I alone? I never warmed to him at all, he was just irritating and I am glad he’s gone.
Dark episode, but thankfully that’s one good bit…
I rather enjoyed the episode. Part I was arguably better, but as a whole, it was one of the better finales of late.
I hope Missy returns, but maybe not next series. If River comes back next series, it would be fun to see Missy around her (oh, the jealousy!). I think if the Gallifrey plotline gets bigger next series, Missy will presumably be present at some point.
@33 I never liked Danny or bought that Clara had fallen so hard for him, when the most we ever saw of them was awkward flirting at the start and one time sitting on the couch together. However, I found it to be a fitting ending for him, to repent and save the boy. I am glad that Clara didn’t leave the TARDIS just for Danny, as that never seemed believeable (though she lied to make it seem that was why).
At Christmas, certainly The Doctor will realize Danny is actually gone, and I am interested to see how much that will play into the Christmas special, as Clara should be present (no pun intended) for it.
It was inane drivel, just like the rest of this season.
The genuinely sickening bonuses this time were that Moffat had a story about dead soldiers coming back to life showing the day before Remembrance Sunday in the UK, and that the dead Brigadier section was crass and foully offensive even without that.
I have to wonder if Moffat has even a tiny clue why some people think his scripts are entirely moronic, because the weight of evidence has started to suggest that what’s on display really is him thinking as well as he knows how. And that’s just desperate.
This two part episode was very bleak, and dark, and trafficked in images relating to death and the afterlife in ways that were very inappropriate. I watched this part two with my visiting granddaughter at my side, and perhaps her discomfort colors my opinions. But I wonder if Moffat has forgotten that this is a show that should be suitable for children as well as adults.
I was disappointed by Osgood’s death, as I had grown to like her quite a bit–her appeal transcended her rather limited screen time.
I love UNIT getting involved, but the whole “make the Doctor the President of the World and give him a faux Looking Glass aircraft” just felt stupid to me. I wish Kate would get more to do whenever she appears–I am glad at least that she wasn’t dead.
The Cyber-Brigadier was nice, but again, something for adults who remember who the original Brigadier was, not younger viewers.
I liked Danny from the start, and liked him overcoming the cyberprogramming to be the defender of mankind. I was touched that he used his chance at resurrection for the young boy he killed in the war. He ended up being the most noble and selfless character we have seen in Doctor Who in quite some time. I wish I could say the same for some of the other characters.
I very much enjoyed the Doctor’s little speech about just being an idiot with a box. Because it hopefully means that the whole stupid season long questioning of whether the Doctor is a good man or not is at an end. I hope they don’t bring back that inane subplot back next year. Don’t talk about what the Doctor is or isn’t–just show us!
Clara ended up being quite a little liar and manipulator. And the Doctor was lying his butt off in his final conversation with Clara, too. I think we were supposed to feel sorry for them at the end. I just felt like the two liars got what they deserved, misery that might have been lessened had they been truthful.
There were a few good moments in the episode, like the Doctor diving into the Tardis, and Danny’s heroic speech and actions, but I didn’t much care for this finale. Like this whole season, I suppose–a lot of slogging relieved by a few flashes of excellence.
The Christmas Episode, from its trailer, does have a real “Who Goes There?” feel to it. With Santa thrown in. Does that mean Santa will really end up being a tentacle-waving horror from outer space?
@36: Doctor Who has always featured plenty of death, even though it’s always been a show for children.
1) Missy had teleported in a flash of blue before; all other disintigrations (including the future Osgood Thanatos) were red. QED.
2) The Mastress lied about the coordinates of Gallifrey? How unexpected!
3) Brigadier was a nice touch—perhaps Sarah Jane will come back as a Dalek…
4) It will be revealed that Osgood was teleported by the Master to a place of safety where she can run and play and wear puffy shirts, capes, celery stalks, scarves, etc etc. Because Guido says: Nice kneecap you have, Moffit; be a shame if anyting were to happen to it, know what I mean?
@33 & 34: So glad I’m not the only one who never warmed to Danny. I just never felt like I should care about him. When Clara said he’s the only person to whom she’ll ever say “I love you,” I couldn’t even fathom how she got to that point. First she’s leaving him with the check on dates, then she’s lying about going with the Doctor, then they’re soulmates forever? What?
To further emphasize the point that Gallifrey was not outside the TARDIS, remember this: “The Doctor lies.” He lies to Clara and says it’s there, just as she lies to him and says Danny came back. They’re telling happy stories to save each other from the painful truth. They’re supposed to be white lies, but they’re terribly painful ones.
@36/37 I am so stupified by the criticism of the finale for its focus on death and the afterlife. Firstly, the “afterlife” was a sham. It was the timelord matrix to which people were uploaded. Yes, the dead “came back” in a sense, but aside from Danny, no one saw any faces or even knew which cyberman was which human. It is not as though they went back to their families to frighten and disturb them. The show did not confirm nor deny a true afterlife. It was just a scheme. It worked for a while, but it ultimately failed.
Just a side note: I guess all those humans that were buried aren’t there anymore, as they were cyberman who blew up in the sky? Does that mean more space in graveyards? Who is going to fix all the holes and torn up ground? And where is the debris from millions upons millions of exploding cybermen?
I is confused, weren’t the Dr and Clara both chained to a rock at the end of an earlier episode with no resolution?
Are you thinking of the beginning of The Caretaker? That was part of a montage showing Clara being run off her feet in juggling both her lives, not resolving the scene just added to the hectic feel of it.
Of course the Master survived.
i) She’s the Master. Unexplained resurrections are part of the job description.
ii) More specifically: She built the Nethersphere, which was still in operation at the time. Danny ended up there when his cyber-form self-destructed, so that’s where she would end up, too. And would the Master ever build an afterlife without a revolving door by which she could leave at will?
@43: That’s an excellent explanation for how she could’ve survived. And maybe the Master had already stolen the Matrix drive much earlier. That could be how he came back after being vaporized on-camera in “Planet of Fire,” say. Maybe he used it as a personal resurrection device first, and then got the idea for the afterlife scam as an expansion of that.
@44 I am really surprised that we never found out what happened to the Nethersphere. Is it still in W3? Why would the Doctor just leave Time Lord technology lying around?
@45: I think W3 was actually the interior of the Master’s TARDIS, which is how it could be inside St. Paul’s Cathedral without the general public knowing. It’s the old Professor Chronotis trick (from the unaired “Shada”) — disguise a TARDIS as a door, so people think they’re inside the building when they’re actually inside a TARDIS inside the building. If the Mistress actually teleported away as we suspect, she probably teleported to her TARDIS and escaped in it.
I really, really need Moffat to leave as showrunner. Not because of the usual complaints about can’t-write-women or subtle-homophobia or things like that (which I think are overblown, although he does have worrying tendencies at times), but simply because he’s becoming a horrible, lazy writer (which also probably reflects on the other reported problems, laziness means you rely on problematic tropes all the more, because there’s a history of them working).
I mean, I know “Make $!@@@@@% up” is part of the game of DW, but really, they should at least make sense and be somewhat internally consistent. “Every piece of a cyberman contains the seeds for another, if one of those seeds lands on you, you become a cyberman…” Okay, SO WHY BOTHER WITH THE DEAD? Just convert the living like that! (Also, it makes them too powerful, so it’s a stupid idea for that reason alone… this is a big problem with Moffat, he ruined the Weeping Angels by not only making it so you can’t blink, but you ALSO can’t stare or you’ll turn into one! Way to turn them from a creepy menace into something that should automatically win except for shoddy writing). And why even bother collecting the “souls” of the living, if you can make cybermen from dead bodies, why not just upload a standardized “Cyberman” package, and have no trouble with loyalty or emotional removal (why do they have to choose to do that, exactly?) Also, what use is travelling to the far future to recruit the people who died in Into The Dalek? Their bodies are still not available in the ‘present day’ to turn into Cybermen. Why not just collect them as they die? (Also, this means Amy and Rory and every companion ever, other than Danny and the Brigadier were Cybermen stuck in Missy’s heaven… yeah, great send-off)
And I’ve said it before, but I HATE HATE HATE HATE WITH THE POWER OF A THOUSAND SUNS IF EVERY MILIMETER OF MY NERVOUS SYSTEM WAS INSCRIBED WITH THE WORD HATE IT WOULD NOT COVER ONE MILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR the “something happens everywhere on Earth at once.” They did it with the $#!$ing trees before the finale, and now with the Cybermen. I guess everybody in the world is just going to forget EVERY LIVING HUMAN THROUGHOUT HISTORY COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD AND THEN EXPLODING, just like they forgot the trees. I hate it because it makes the human race into idiots and it’s a hallmark of bad writing, not caring about the consequences and so reverting things to the status quo in the laziest way possible. If you’re going to do something to the whole world HAVE THE %#!$ing guts to make it have a consequence and have it change the world forever more, that now the world is one that knows the dead are arisen. But no, he’ll go the lazy way and have the world totally not believe in aliens next time he needs to do a modern ep. I’d think Moffat would be aware of this after he lampshaded Amy Pond not knowing about the Daleks or Cybermen invasion (that was due to the Crack wiping things from existence and altering history along the way, wasn’t it?)
The “save the kid I killed” was pure emotional crap. I don’t mean emotional parts in Doctor Who are crap, they’re an important part of the show… but they have to be earned. This wasn’t. It’s emotional crap, because it was done in a crap way, it was a transparent “pull our heartstrings” moment to make him noble, except there’s no reason any of it should work in the first place except “I’m the writer and I say it can happen like that.” Why can only one person come back? Because the writer wants it! Why can it somehow make a portal in the air so Danny can talk to Clara and emotionally tell his decision? Because the writer wants it! Why can it produce a fully functioning body of a long dead person? Because the writer wants it! That’s literally the ONLY reason for anything in this show, and THAT is bad, hack writing. And if you want to be a hack, fine, but move out of the way of showrunning a franchise like DW so that somebody who’s NOT a hack can eventually take over.
Osgood’s death was just pathetic, especially from somebody who was familiar with the Master. I so wanted them to pull a Whedon-esque inversion, where, the moment Missy asked her to come closer because she could only whisper the secret, if Osgood had gone straight to the Doctor and said “The Master’s too smug, and she’s trying to play a game with me. I’m pretty sure she’s planning something, in fact… I think she’s already escaped, and…” (zap), with Missy pouting about not getting to have her fun, how she was going to whisper “I’m going to kill you in ten seconds” and had a whole countdown plan but she ruined it. THAT would have been a worthy death, if she had to die, it would have given Osgood some dignity. Instead, she dies by stupid (not only her stupid, killed by the Master after being threatened and given a countdown without bothering to call for help… but the stupid of those guards behind Missy who just let it happen and just stared ahead doing nothing).
The most annoying thing is that there are times when it’s _close_ to brilliant and moving. If they’d reigned in their impulses… say only had a select proportion of the dead population (maybe rich people, UNIT itself, and their families) turn instead of every living person, throughout history, things like having the Brig return would have made epic moments (we never actually saw him self-destruct though, did we? In my mind, the Cyber-Brig, knowing he could never exist in society like that, decided to indulge his long held dream to travel in space himself, and could be encountered again sometime on Mars or in the far future when he’s assembled a new body based on imperfect memory of his old one).
Instead the taste of those good moments are ruined because they’re buried in crap. I so want them to find a way to retcon this whole two-parter as being entirely set inside the Matrix.
One minor point I haven’t seen addressed: UNIT mentioned they were already looking into W3, because a woman with a scottish accent warned them. Was that supposed to be Missy? Her plan didn’t seem to depend on her getting captured, that I saw. Or did Moffat try to sneak in a new mystery for later?
Maybe the woman with the scottish accent who tipped off UNIT was old lady Pond…
I’m sure the woman who tipped off UNIT was meant to be Missy, and she brought them there so she’d have an audience. Hence the Doctor’s remark about her wanting to play to the gallery.
@46 That would make a lot of sense! And you know the Doctor went back to the Cathedral and just KNEW the Mistress had escaped again. No wonder he was so mad.
@47 “And why even bother collecting the “souls” of the living, if you can make cybermen from dead bodies, why not just upload a standardized “Cyberman” package”
This has always been a problem with the Cybermen. They have to be CyberMEN, converted from people. Doctor Who apparently does not allow mass production of AI constructs.
50: “This has always been a problem with the Cybermen. They have to be CyberMEN, converted from people. Doctor Who apparently does not allow mass production of AI constructs.”
I’d argue that it DOES, and that’s exactly what Cybermen ARE. All Cybermen act identically, pretty much. It doesn’t matter whether they were Mother Theresa or Karl Marx or Adolf Hitler, or a person who hates the Cybermen and everything they stand for with every fibre of their being… once they’re converted, they all act exactly the same. That’s part of what’s terrifying. It’s the erasure of individuality. Now, of course, sometimes you get a little of the old person bleeding through, because they do convert living bodies and preserve human brains (though heavily modified), because they have some use for the memories contained within… but all of that is within the context of a race that converts living people directly, and in that context it makes sense.
Once you’re at the point when you can do it from long-dead bodies, and the brain tissue is all decomposed goo ANYWAY, it might make sense to keep the memories you recorded at death, maybe, archived, but there’s no good reason to ever attach them to the bodies. Except “the writer says it works like that.” And that’s a $@@@@@!% reason when it flies in the face of all physics and logic. (Though, considering Danny died extremely recently within the show’s universe, it _might_ make sense for HIS brain to still contain enough functional material that his personality can bleed through, or even for the brains of the people collected by W3 to be directly preserved so they wouldn’t degrade… but the show implied that all the consciousnesses throughout history were getting downloaded into bodies, even bodies stashed in graveyards, which is stupid).
Haven’t seen it yet, slightly confused by the comments…
Did we get an official answer whether the “woman in the shop” who gave Clara the Doctor’s number 2 years ago was in fact Missy? Did Missy set the Doctor and Clara up so that the Doctor would be saved from Trenzelore and be able to play with Missy?
Yes.
And yes.
Also to ensure that he would “go to hell for her. And he did.”
There’s a couple of old maxims about storytelling that Moffat seriously needs to sit down and think about. For, like, months. The first one is “Show, don’t tell,” and the second one, which is related, is “Character is what people do.”
The only characterization that Moffat seems capable of is to have “character A” stand around telling us things about “character B.” Oh, and sometimes character A will stand around, back of hand to forehead, saying things like “Am I this? Am I that?” It’s 100% telling and no showing whatsoever. In anybody’s book, it’s clunky and lame storytelling.
But it’s worse than that. While Moffat might be incapable of deliberately illustrating someone’s character by having them react to events in a specific way, he is -astonishingly- quite capable of having his characters do exactly that without him even realizing. Let’s take Clara…
Danny dies in a senseless accident. Clara is terribly upset, as she should be. It’s a moment of genuine stress for the character. Clara’s reaction to this pressure can now very easily be used by the writer as a revelatory moment for the defining of Clara’s steadfast and wonderful character. This is what characterization is all about: the moment of stress when a person’s true character is revealed. Right? Right?
So what does Moffat have Clara do? What is this character defining moment that emerges under stress? That’s right. He has her utterly betray the Doctor’s trust in her and attempt to force the Doctor to do her bidding by threatening him with the loss of the Tardis. She gathers up the Tardis keys and throws them into a lava flow when he doesn’t do as she says. So what sort of character is it that’s revealed? What words would we use to describe that? Petulant? Spoiled? Childish? Self important? Self pitying? How about vile? Loathsome? Repellant?
Betrayal and blackmail are not positive character traits. They aren’t. Oooh but she was rilly rilly rilly upset! It wasn’t her fault! She was upset!
Oh for goodness’ sake. Let’s just jump straight to literally Hitler, shall we?
Hitler was in charge of killing four and a half million Jews. But it’s okay because his cat had just died the day before.
See how that works? Honestly. Get a grip. Moffat is simply awful.
No one noticed that the Doctor did nothing this episode but run around being taunted. He had zero to do with the resolution of the problem. It was solved by the soldiers he denigrated and of course Clara.
See “The Robots of Death.” And the clockwork androids. And the Movellans. The Whoniverse is full of robot races. What defines the Cybermen is that they’re cyborgs. The original idea was inspired by Kit Pedler’s interest in transplantation surgery. He wanted to explore what would happen if humans ended up replacing so many parts of themselves that they weren’t human anymore. So it’s more about transhumanism than robotics, or rather, about robotics as a means to the end of transhumanism or posthumanism.
@51: You’re forgetting that the Mistress is a time traveler, and that we saw her capturing the consciousnesses of people killed in Victorian England and the far future. The Doctor said that Missy had been going up and down the timeline, perpetuating her afterlife scam throughout all history. So all of these minds would’ve been harvested at the moment of death, no matter when in linear history they died.
@55: I recently heard a thought-provoking statement from Tor editor Marco Palmieri (who used to edit most of my Star Trek fiction for Pocket). At a convention panel on writing villains, he said that what defines good villains are the choices they force the heroes to make. The Mistress forced a choice on the Doctor — not just the choice of whether to use the Cyber-army or not, since of course he never would have, but the choice of whether to sacrifice Danny in order to stop the Cybermen, and ultimately the choice of whether to trust Danny to do the right thing.
So yes, the Doctor had everything to do with the resolution. Stories aren’t just about actions, they’re about the decisions behind them. And it was the Doctor’s decision in the climax that determined the resolution of the problem.
“@51: You’re forgetting that the Mistress is a time traveler, and that we saw her capturing the consciousnesses of people killed in Victorian England and the far future. The Doctor said that Missy had been going up and down the timeline, perpetuating her afterlife scam throughout all history. So all of these minds would’ve been harvested at the moment of death, no matter when in linear history they died.”
I’m not forgetting that at all. It’s actually irrelevant to my point (although I complained about it for another reason in my earlier post… what good does capturing the mind of a 22nd century soldier do if she creates her army to destroy all of humanity in the 21st century when there’s no body to attach it to). My objection isn’t to the harvesting of the minds, it’s to the BODIES, which are, at the time of Missy’s plans activate, brainless due to decomposition. So if they don’t have a brain, there’s no reason their personality needs to be involved at all, they could just build a new brain with the Cyberman template… their individual personality has NEVER mattered much to the Cybermen, because that, in fact, gets obliterated when they get converted. It’s only when they physically have to convert living beings that their brain being kept alive makes any sense. Once you make them powerful enough that that’s not necessary, their whole concept falls apart into incoherence…
Of course the Cybermen could have converted the living along with the dead. Missy deliberately left the living alone at first, so that she could have something to threaten the Doctor with, to make him take the control bracelet. (She may be crazy, but she’s not stupid.)
johnbiltz@55: The Doctor gave Danny the bracelet. That’s not nothing.
And I am PISSED OFF at this show right now because of this. I loved Danny Pink. So, so, so much. Even more than Rory, and I loved me some Rory Williams. Moffat, STOP RUINING EVERYTHING.
One day I might be able to think about this episode objectively and say how good it is from a storytelling perspective, but right now all I really want is for Santa to deliver Danny to Clara for Christmas. FIX IT SANTA, PLEASE.
Also, like comment #1, I completely lost my composure and began to sob uncontrollably when it was revealed that Kate lived and who saved her. And I’ve never seen Classic Who. But her FATHER and he’s a dead CYBERMAN but love isn’t an emotion, it’s a PROMISE and seriously I cannot. Even.
See how that works?
Not really, no. The example you give is nothing at all like the example you cite from the episode. It’s like comparing a cut finger to the loss of a limb.
As it happens, I agree that Clara is not an admirable companion: she’s deeply flawed. She can be arrogant, and impulsive, and she lies. But the writers, including Moffat, seem to agree. After all, unlike almost any other companion, Moffat points out that this one was selected by the Doctor’s arch-enemy to exploit his own weaknesses – selected for her negative character traits, at that. It’s a darker show and Clara is a darker companion.
@61 – We’re not meant to ascribe those flaws to Clara – all companions are a lens through which we view The Doctor, and the point of this series was affirming the “fact” that The Doctor is fundamentally just like Missy – it’s no coincidence that Clara’s fall from grace coincides with her becoming “more like” The Doctor. I’d point out that Clara’s only flaw is that, unlike The Doctor, she allowed emotion to cloud her judgement, causing her to act irrationally – but that’s not the point Moffat & Co. are attempting to make. No, their point (which is an extremely ill fit for the Doctor) is –
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”
This was a horrible episode and a horrible finale.
1. Danny Pink aka a human pulled handbrake. He’s like a bad rehash of Mickey Smith, except less brave and with a single facial expression. Didn’t feel sorry for his death because it was like losing a piece of wood.
2. The Cybermen versus the magical power of love. It was way, way less embarrassing when they were vulnerable to gold dust.
The Cybermen are all about removing emotion, individuality, personality. That’s their shtick, what they’re good at, what they’ve been good at for millennia. Saying you can win them by using emotion is like saying you can cut diamonds with a wooden spork, except in NewWho it’s somehow a magical weapon that can defeat inhibitor chips, brain surgery and even death.
3. If everyone dead is now a cyberman (ignoring where all the metal comes from), that means every companion who ever died has been, briefly, a cyberman too, and decided to erase their emotions in the Matrix. If that doesn’t want to make you vomit, I dunno what would.
4. The holes in the plot and narration. Too many to say, but most of them have already been mentioned above.
5. The Doctor does nothing for 90 minutes. Seriously, he does nothing at all. The Doctor has become incidental to his own series. He could be written out and it would end up the same way. This is not how it should be on a show called Doctor Who and not The Clara Oswald Show with a TARDIS and friends.
@63: You’re making the same elementary mistake as #55, namely assuming that “doing something” means taking direct action. As I said, it’s decisions that matter in stories. And sometimes the decision not to act, or to trust in others, is the most important one of all.
The Doctor has always been defined as the idea man, the one who explains the situation and its solution to others. It has often been the case that other characters are the ones who implement the plans he devises or act on the revelations he gives them. He’s not some dumb musclebound action hero who “solves” problems by punching or shooting them — he’s the Quatermass-style intellectual hero who figures things out and explains them, or who invents the devices that others use to save the day. Sometimes, depending on the Doctor, he takes the decisive actions himself, but frequently over the decades he’s assisted and guided others.
Indeed, that was the original premise of the series. The show was named after him, but he was originally a supporting character in it, with his human companions being the actual leads. He was the catalyst for the situations they got into and the one who explained things and figured things out, but the companions were the ones who implemented his solutions. Later Doctors were often more proactive, but the pattern of guiding and assisting others remained, whether companions or UNIT or just the leaders and defenders of whatever planet or spaceship they landed on that week.
So to say that this isn’t how it should be demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge of the show’s history.
@@@@@ 64 – What you’re saying is accurate, but 55 & 63 have a point. While the events in the episode occurred near The Doctor (and indirectly, because of him via Missy), he didn’t make any worthwhile or helpful observations, he didn’t intervene with a response or solution, he didn’t unravel Missy’s plan (she explained it to him out loud), and he didn’t influence the decisions of others, or even participate in the course of action. He just got knocked about while everyone else alternately fell dead or solved all the problems. From a narrative standpoint, he might as well have been the titular corpse from Weekend at Bernie’s.
@61 – We’re not meant to ascribe those flaws to Clara
A pretty unlikely claim, I think: on what do you base it, apart from mind-reading (a notoriously unreliable science)?
If a character is portrayed with flaws, I tend to assume the portrayal is intentional, unless there’s good evidence to the contrary. That Clara lies, often and foolishly, is clearly established as a mixed blessing at best by this season’s scripts. They show that lies can sometimes be necessary but often get in the way of happiness. This episode was one of those.
the point of this series was affirming the “fact” that The Doctor is fundamentally just like Missy
No, it was suggesting the idea that the Doctor might be just like her, but ultimately affirmed that he isn’t. Very different.
@66 – It’s more a deduction based on past analysis of Moffat’s writing style paired with the themes and events of the season – the same line of thought that led me to correctly predict Missy’s goal, before watching the episode. The key reasoning being, as I said – “it’s no coincidence that Clara’s fall from grace coincides with her becoming “more like” The Doctor.” It’s not about how awful Clara has always been – it’s about how travelling with The Doctor has changed her. Remember that theme?
The quotes around the word “fact,” mean that I do not believe it to be a fact. The episode does, however, foreshadow a continued descent into darkness. Where Lucas saw it fit to have Anakin suddenly murder a room full of children, Moffat at least had the sense to ease us into the reign of the Evil Doctor – however inexpertly it was acheived, I believe that was the misguided purpose of this season. The Doctor’s refusal of Missy’s offer does not mean that her plan didn’t work – he did become darker, and she knows for a fact that he has the potential to become The Valeyard – it’s not a question of “if,” but rather a “when,” and “how can I make it happen sooner?”
Despite popular opinion, this episode did not end on a positive note for The Doctor. He was “proven” to be everything the season warned of – a good dalek, a blood soaked general, a liar, a corruptor of virtuous people, a bringer of death, and a cold blooded killer (if not for the Brigadeer) – worst of all, he deludes himself into believing his hands are clean, when he would be absolutely lost without his companions. That’s the story. We leave off with The Doctor feeling weaker, full of anguish, lying to himself, and alone. I don’t like the trajectory, I think it’s a bad idea, but I see it all the same.
@64: Yeah no, I know the history of the show quite well, so please stop assuming.
I never said I wanted the Doctor to take direct action (though several Doctors would have had absolutely no problem with that, so why do you?).
I said I didn’t see him do anything, including giving useful advice, supporting the main character, or making the gizmo that saves the day, or just being more than there.
He does nothing as Earth President except insult a guy who then promptly dies. He does nothing to help Clara in her moral conundrum – actually he makes it worse. He does not tell Danny how to defeat Missy’s plan – the man came up with it on his own. Without deus ex machina Brigadier, I’m not sure he would’ve even been able to decide what to do with Missy (not necessarily kill her, just decide). He just takes other’s people decisions and gloats as if they were his own.
Yes, he’s supposedly the catalyst – everything in the episode has apparently been made for him by Missy – but if you remove that and simply make Missy into a generic Bond villain, nothing changes in the plot, and very little does in the emotional stakes. Clara still has to decide whether to Cyberize her boyfriend or not, whether to kill Missy or not.
I have no problem with a Doctor who is mostly passive to the events around him, like Five was. The difference is, in Five it was often shown to be a fault, a limitation of his character, so much that it shocks us completely when he takes charge in Androzani.
However, we’re often told that these latest Doctors are assertive, generals, leaders, manipulators, and all that, but when it comes down to it we’re rarely shown it to be true.
So.. First time commenter. Just saw the episode. A bit of background: I had thought about starting to watch Who for sometime, actually began when season 8 started, the regeneration seemed like a good jumping point. After 3 episodes.. I think I was hooked. Deep Breath was good.. Robots, meh. Into Dalek (IIRC) was again quite good. In between waiting for new wpisodes I went back and watched Matt Smith era. Then the Tennant-era.
And.. Well. Here’s the thing. I really like Capaldi as the doctor. I think he has that something. That quality that makes him a good fit for the role. Of course he was my first doctor, and I did enjoy Smith & Tennant, but for me, Capaldi as an actor is where it’s at.
Yet.. The writing in this season, particularily compared to early Matt Smith-era, it was abysmally bad. I just don’t know. Clara was always boring, she kept on being boring. Danny pink comes from somewhere and… I’m supposed to care for this guy? No connection whatsoever. And if there was characterisation or that characterisation moving forward, I obviously missed it. The “Romance”-arc of Clara & Danny? As far as I could tell.. there was nothing there, no chemistry between the actors, it was terribly written. Seeing their scenes I just don’t buy them being in love. There wasn’t much there I cared about.
The whole morality, good man-bad-man, thingamajig (I don’t know what it was, it certainly wasn’t a plotline.) was just… weird. There wasn’t ,as far as I could tell, anything coherent or thought-provoking or any element in the thingamajig that wasn’t contradicted during the episode, earlier or at a later episode.
I also didn’t really “get” the whole.. Soldier-general-whatever… Oh, sure, the War Doctor is and has been a big influence on all new-who doctors, all that went on in trenzalore was bound to leave it’s mark on the doctor, but.. again. I just didn’t understand what Moffat/the writers were trying to say?
Overrall, I think I’m just, disappointed, I guess. I feel Capaldi and the 12th doctor deserves better than this. The season wasn’t very coherent, lacking in emotional impact, just, I don’t even know, I may be forgetting some parts, but on the whole.. I think that the writing in general for this season was a mess. Nothing made sense, Moffat did the Moffat thing. And I’m willing to say that in general, I kinda enjoyed the RTD-era more than Moffat. And right now, after this season, after having been immersed into this series. With this doctor, I’m really starting to think that I need to jump on the “get Moffat off the showrunner position”-bandwagon.
@69 – Amen! As a new fan, there’s no nostalgia clouding your vision, or causing you to look for meaning that just isn’t there, which means that you can see lazy, zeitgeist-mirroring writing for exactly what it is. Capaldi deserves better!
You make some good points, but I have to disagree about Clara and Danny. I thought their whole relationship this season was flat and uninspiring, and in the end tried to claim an emotional depth that it just had never actually created. As such, the effect of his death on Clara left me more scratching my head than succumbing to the feels.
One loose end this season that bothered me was the supposed decendent of Danny Pink that Clara and the Doctor ran into earlier. With Danny dead now, where did a decendent come from? There was certainly nothing in the season to even hint he already had a child, or that Clara was pregnant at the end.
This isn’t the first time the Cybermen were defeated by the Power of Love. Remember how the Doctor’s pal Craig defeated the Cybermen in that show where the Doctor was trying to be a shopkeeper?
@@.-@ yes i agree Clara has to be pregnant due to meeting her descendant who was (the spit of )Danny. And@33 i’m with you – never warmed to him either – whinge whinge whinge and no personality to boot.
The preggers questions: Clara is totally pregnant. At the end of the episode, she says, “Danny and I are going to be fine.” Hello! She’s gonna name the baby Danny! But for those who are naysayers but are wondering how she could have met her descendent but not end up pregnant, remember, time is nonlinear. It’s a big ball of “wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff.” Just because you met your descendent in the furture doesn’t mean an adventure in the past isn’t going to totally kill any future off-spring.
In general, I didn’t love this entire season. The twelfth doctor is just too mean or grumpy or something. And the season’s arc pokes holes in the whole Doctor timeline. We have UNIT. Hell, UNIT comes to the rescue in the final episode, but there isn’t a space ship in service to get to the moon? WTF!
So maybe the twelfth doctor is moving into his “true” nature, which he so loves to deny–#11 especially. I don’t like that kind of meandoctor. People may complain about the 10th doctor’s need to apologize, but at least he acknowledged he had to make tough decisions. He didn’t want to end an entire race, but he would if he had to. At least he was man enough to say the pain he was going to cause sucked balls. Tennant’s doctor knew who he was, tried to be good whenever possible but would save the world in spite of the costs. Capaldi’s doctor just uses his “attack eyebrows.”
The whole purpose of companions is to create the balance of good/evil for the doctor. Donna tells him in the first episode we see her in with Doctor 11 (paraphrase) “You need someone with you.” Or maybe it was Martha when she left him. Clara obviously didn’t create that balance for Capaldi’s doctor. Instead, they both became Doctors. Bleck!
And another thing, isn’t Osgood Kate’s daughter? Where is the saving of the daughter? Where is the grief over her loss by the Cyber-gen.?
Tangent: why haven’t we seen Martha or Mickey? They were working for UNIT, so why haven’t them made appearances? Capaldi’s doctor wants to know if he is a good man. Wouldn’t the previous doctor’s companions help to answer that question?
@74: Osgood was Kate’s assistant, not her daughter. Perhaps you misheard the British pronunciation of “Ma’am” as “Mom.”
My final thoughts on this series: I feel Peter Capaldi is marvelous in the role, but the writing this season has been forced and uneven at best and so spotty in continuity that it kept batting me out of any emotional involvement in the story.
The series may have been trying to focus on character, but it did this so clumsily – using informed attributes and repeated phrases and hammered themes that didn’t really match up to what was happening on screen. No-one was letting the viewer make up their own mind about these people at any point (with the exception of Missy. We can see she’s evil and insane. Because it’s hammered. A lot.)
To sum this all up – I don’t want to rewatch any of the episodes of this series, even to figure out what I liked or didn’t like in any of them. That is a first for me.
#74: “But for those who are naysayers but are wondering how she could have met her descendent but not end up pregnant, remember, time is nonlinear. It’s a big ball of “wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff.” Just because you met your descendent in the furture doesn’t mean an adventure in the past isn’t going to totally kill any future off-spring.”
But apparently (according to the Angels in Manhattan episode) if you so much as read an account of what happened to you in an adventure you’re experiencing, you’re forever bound to that future, even if you’re the Doctor, even though there’s no reason the story couldn’t have been lying. :P
I don’t mind either interpretation, I just wish they would make up their mind instead of using whichever idea they like at any given time.
@78: “Using whichever idea they like at any given time” has pretty much been Doctor Who‘s standard operating procedure since the beginning. In the first season in 1963, the policy was that history could never be rewritten, “not one line,” but in season 2, the Doctor and his friends were trying to stop a rogue time traveler from changing history. Then there are the three different, incompatible fates for Atlantis.
@79: That there’s a long history of something being badly done is never an excuse for it to continue to be badly done. With a show with as long a history of this, there are bound to be mistakes, and those can be forgiven, but it should never be a license to keep making them over and over again. Plenty of people would kill to be able to write for Doctor Who, so any writers who get that opportunity should be striving to bring their A game at all times. And being able to live by the same rules you set for your world (and remember, this isn’t somebody setting a new direction or being unable to reconcile 50 years of other people’s continuity, this is Moffat alone who wrote both Angels, where you’re locked into your fate, and this season, where, possibly, you can meet your grandkids and then they no longer ever existed), or explain a damn good reason why not, is part of a pretty basic level of writing competency.
If the writers don’t care, if the SHOWRUNNER doesn’t care, why should the viewers?
@74: Because one of Moffat’s more idiotic ideas is that Companions should be left alone once the Doctor they traveled with has left the scene.
The thing that really bugged me about Osgood’s death was that there were two soldiers standing there, with weapons, who did NOTHING until the moment the Master killed them. Seriously? Were they not warned about this woman? Did they have no brains? Were they so stupid they thought it made sense to allow a scientist to get close to a high-value and dangerous enemy?
Even though they didn’t know the Master had become the Mistress, they still should have known to keep her better guarded.
I don’t think Osgood is dead because she was killed by the same thing that killed the master and he (I guess she now) has a nasty habit of not dying. Also it wouldn’t be the first time we saw someone turned to dust when they were actually just teleported. Badwolf anyone?
I’m a first time poster. I’ve quite a few reflection on this imperfect but much different season of Dr. Who. I mostly want to talk about the Master and the Doctor. I also just saw the Christmas Special.
First of all, I love Peter Capaldi. It was the first doctor since Christopher Eccelson who was truly the man stained in blood with serious post-traumatic stress disorder. And, the first doctor that was not lovesick for his companion in some way, shape, or form. The idiot connection that developed between Rose and 10th doctor just pissed me off, and it was the hallmark of the Davis era of writing incredibly interesting plots with happy and sappy endings. Having a very capable Scottish actor in his 50s is so refreshing after Matt Smith’s zany “young” old doctor. Don’t get me wrong…I liked Matt Smith eventually, but I just have this thing about actors who are younger than me playing the doctor, I suppose (I’m 37…the doctor really should be in his 40s, at least.) I mean, this doctor is SO Scottish that he doesn’t even allow for hugging his most dear and trusted companion. I loved that he was Scottish. It really changed him in a subtle way. But anyway…
I honestly had forgotten about Osgood being anyone of any importance until I looked her up on TardisWiki. Moffat said in an interview he killed her to show how insane and evil the Master really was. I think that has been established elsewhere in the series, but it seems apparent that his redemption by stopping the Time Lords in the idiotic “End of Time” Tenant regeneration episode, thankfully Davis’s last, was faux. I was so pissed at the idea of turning the Master into some kind of unstable lightening throwing lunatic who saves the Earth. The Master is NOT meant for redemption. This verifies all of that. And no, I do not think he/she is dead. In fact, it did not even occur to me at the time that the Brigader killed him. I assumed she had transported away. It was only later that it was IMPLIED that the Master was killed. But, he’s obviously not dead. I do not think that they would go to that much trouble to bring a character back from the apparently “dead for good, and moreover REDEEMED” and then just kill her off. Plus. Gomez is perfect as the Mistress. She HAS to come back. She was the Master personified, but a bit different that John Simm was, obviously. Thankfully, he is no longer “redeemed” and he/she can return as the greatest Doctor Who villian in existence.
For the first time, I really enjoyed the Cybermen. It was similar to the episode when Clara was first introduced with people changing into Daleks in that respect, I think. It was the first time that the Cybermen were truly terrifying. I’ve never much liked the Cybermen as villians. They seem simply too much like Daleks in their simpleminded pursuit of “DELETE” instead of “EXTERMINATE.” I think Moffat used humanities fear of death to TERRIFY the living hell out of the audience. That our mortal remains retain conciousness and just feel as they rot or are cremeated or whatever was just TERRIFYING. And, the idea that all these dead people became Cybermen was entirely the point. The Mistress doesn’t leave anything sacred…even death, which is a common theme in Doctor Who, but never more so than this season. Yes, it leaves lots of plot holes about what in the hell happened to all the dead bodies, and who was going to cover them all up, but this is science fiction. The Master previously wiped out a 10th of humanity, but Davis destroyed this by his fairy tale ending of “the year that never happened.” This time, the Master/Mistress left a lasting impact. He killed a lot of people and ruined their peaceful rests. So, this is a villian so evil that he takes the minds of the recently deceased to use for evil. The whole POINT is to emphasize how evil and unredeemable the Mistress/Master really is. Thank God! He’s the doctor’s archnemesis for a reason. I just wish that the doctor and Missy could have had a little bit more catching up to do. But, of course she lied about the coordinates to find Galifrey. Anything to hurt the doctor.
Moving on from the Master…let us have a honest look at Peter Capaldi as the Doctor. As I was saying before, and more than one other person has said, this doctor is dark. This Doctor is wounded. This Doctor lies even easier than his earlier incarnations. I felt like as he destroyed the console of his TARDIS after being deceived by the Mistress great pity for the man.
Did the Doctor really do “nothing” in this episode? What could he do? Magically drag Earth back to its proper place like he did in the overblown and dreadful return of Davros episodes back with Tenant? This is a Doctor who cannot magically solve everything. He’s just an idiot with a time machine at the end of the day. That he has been willing to take up the different roles afforded him is a testament to the greatness of the man, but at the end of the day, he’s an idiot with a box. It was two average men, two soldiers – people the Doctor thinks he is ABOVE most of the time – end up saving the day. The Doctor cannot make the big decision this time. His action is not taking any action and simply surviving. And tossing the braclet to Danny.
I have to agree that Danny and Clara really didn’t have much chemistry until he was in his silver armor. Then, they did…and you could almost believe that the two had a love that could save the world. It was a bit like the wooden chemistry between Fred and Wesley in Angel until Fred lay dying in his arms. I did feel an emotional connection between Danny and Clara at the end. Does it forgive the uneven writing for the season between the two? It always seemed like they were two casually flirting collegues than deeply in love.
I feel like Clara has run her course for the show. The Christmas episode was a letdown, like they usually are. That she would want to continue to travel after all she has been through seems silly. I wish they had kept the ending with her being an old woman and the Doctor having to set off on his own to find a new companion. Clara has been an uneven companion, just as Amy was. That Moffat was able to give Amy an emotionally satisfying sendoff is a testament to his gifts as a writer. I cried when Amy and Rory’s death dates came up on the graves. She was great as “the impossible girl” who saves the Doctor. But, this season tried to make her “normal” in having a teaching job and boyfriend and blah, blah, blah. Danny Pink was not an appealing character, but that might have been the point. We don’t always love appealing characters. Of course, I hated Rory at first but he grew on me with some time. Doesn’t look like Danny is going to have that opportunity, which might be a shame.
One thing that needs to be considered about Doctor Who is that television often suffers when the network dictates that they need to have “more self-contained” episodes for the casual viewer for us fans. Like Series 7, Series 8 mostly consisted of a lot of hit and miss self-contained episodes. Some work, and some don’t. The last two episodes are then rather like a movie, and like movies it has to reintroduce all aspects of the characters so casual viewers can follow along or so many people are left saying, “who the hell is that?” Of course, for us loyal “fan” watchers – and I am going to assume most posters here fall into that category – this slows the story line down. Series 5 and Series 6 were especially big in being story arcs, and I know that BBC put a lot of pressure to change episodes into more self-contained individual stories. It’s too bad Neil Gaiman didn’t write an episode this series.
To the naysayers of Capaldi’s doctor, I think it is only natural. It takes a whole series for a Doctor to come into his own. That is why the death of the 9th doctor felt so cheap and sudden, as Eccelson was just coming into his own before he quit the series. Capaldi is a gifted actor and will leave his new mark on Doctor Who.
It’s time to move on past Clara Oswald in the next series. I like Clara, but I just think she’s run her course. I do think that she is pregnant and that needs to be addressed before she can leave. I’m glad they didn’t address it in the Chirstmas episode too quickly.
I don’t expect people to agree with me, but I think this was a terrifying and pretty damn satisfying end to a reasonably good series of Dr. Who. The Cybermen FINALLY were terrifying as bad guys. By taking Death as the theme for this series, Steve Moffat bravely went where Doctor Who hasn’t gone in quite a while. I do think that the atheistic Moffat follows the Torchwood continuity in a denial of the afterlife of any sorts, and that really what he is trying to point out is any belief in an afterlife is actually a vulnerablity waiting to be exploited by a villian as terrifying as The Mistress.
Steve Moffat is not without his flaws as a writer, of course. Like almost all two-part Doctor Who’s, this was too easily won by the “good guys” and the Mistress was simply too easily defeated. It did bring tears to my eyes to have the Doctor salute the Brigader and save Kate. Obviously the writers have plans for UNIT and Kate.
Series 8 had a lot of things it had to do. It had to introduce a brand new doctor; it had to re-introduce a beloved villian; it had to get away from the idiotic regeneration in 2013 Christmas episode.
Doctor Who is supposed to be dark. This series went as dark as the series has gone since Eccelson. Now, I just want River Song so that Alex Kingston and Peter Capaldi can interact. And, Galifrey is out there. If the Master survived, then so did other Time Lords. I personally would love to see The Monk show up for a one-episode shot, as I loved him in the radio series with Paul McGann and how utterly immoral he was.