Review by RCR contributing editor, Hayden Black, follow him on Twitter @HaydenBlack!
One of the many reasons Doctor Who works is because its seasons are so uneven. And that’s because the bad episodes are never really THAT bad and when a corker of a story appears it’s mind-blowing. And that sums up the penultimate episode of this latest season; mind-blowing.
With a singing script penned by Steven Moffatt and with absolutely gorgeous direction by Rachel Talalaly, the episode opens with what appears to be the Doctor beginning his regeneration. But we then flashback to a 400-mile long colony ship that’s trying to escape a Black Hole.
This is where the Doctor is playing out his idea that Missy is rehabilitated and letting her lead an investigation. Bill is shot by a blue-skinned janitor but taken to the depths of the ship where time is running much, much slower (go Google “Time Dilation”).
And by the time the Doctor, Missy and Nardole find her, she’s been turned into a Cyberman and Missy has found the John Simm-incarnation of herself who wishes to re-re-habilitate her back into the most evil person in the Universe.
Woah.
The shock ending of this episode matches the perfect ratcheting of tension that Moffatt and, ultimately, Talalay have created from the opening frame. This is Doctor Who at its finest; terrifying, shocking, witty, and fast moving. My only fear is that, as we’ve so often seen on the show, the second part of two-parters often lets down the first.
We’ll find out next week in the shocking conclusion to both the season and Capaldi’s Doctor (presumably next week’s episode will end on that scene, mid-regeneration, and we’ll see who the new Doctor is in the Christmas episode – or maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll see who the new Who is).
Oh and we’ll also find out where that snowy place the Doctor begins to regenerate is – could it be the same South Pole he regenerated in in 1966? Will we see Hartnell’s Doctor over a ridge heading into his own TARDIS to regenerate?
So who are Mondasian Cybermen? Way back in 1966 (over half a century ago! Think about how unbelievably successful Doctor Who is if we’re talking about something that happened 51 years ago!!!), the first Doctor (played by William Hartnell) encountered the Cybermen for the very first time. This encounter also proved his last as it led to his first ever regeneration (into Patrick Troughton).
Since then, we’ve seen Cybermen being “upgraded” each time they reappear until they were reimagined as beings from a parallel universe in 2006. But we’ve never revisited the originals until now.
They also seem so much more chilling under cloth than metal; and their constant screams about pain and their desire for suicide is about as horrifying as this show has gotten because it’s so believable. Don’t like hearing someone scream in pain? Well just turn their volume down.
Terrifying – and even more so as it contains unintended echoes of the Healthcare debacle currently being foisted upon us by Republicans. To think the people in charge don’t care how loud you scream as long as they don’t have to hear it? I’m not going to forget this episode in a hurry.
John Simm also returns under heavy prosthetics playing Mr. Razor, a Fagin-esque character who whips off his mask (as the Master would do back in the 70’s) to reveal his true self to Missy, his future self. Simm played the character brilliantly – far better than the equally-made up Mike Myers in the new Gong Show because I’d twigged it was Myers within a few minutes and had no idea this was Simm until the end.
But lest we think this episode was all about the shocks, there was some genuinely brilliant banter. The who-cares-what-gender-you-are moment of the Doctor explaining to Bill that Time Lords are so much further evolved than humans -coupled with her response “so why are you called Time Lords”; and the whole “I’m Doctor Who” bit that Missy regaled us with. In fact, most everything that came out of Missy’s mouth was brilliant.
We ended on a silver tear as Bill tells the Doctor who she really is and that she waited in vain for him. She’d made him promise he wouldn’t get her killed and he didn’t – her fate, sadly, turned out far, far worse. I’m guessing next week, we’ll all be in floods of tears as we find out the Doctor’s fate too in an episode entitled “The Doctor Falls.”
In the meantime, kudos to Moffat and Talalay for the best episode of Doctor Who in years.
Watch Doctor Who on Saturday nights at 9/8c on BBC America
About this Episode of Doctor Who
Time is running out! Only one day to go until the penultimate episode of Series 10 ‘World Enough and Time’. Friendship drives the Doctor into the rashest decision of his life. Trapped on a giant spaceship, caught in the event horizon of a black hole, he witnesses the death of someone he is pledged to protect. Is there any way he can redeem his mistake? Are events already out of control? For once, time is the Time Lord’s enemy…
The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) is an alien Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels through all of time and space in his TARDIS with his companion. Instead of dying, the Doctor is able to “regenerate” into a new body, taking on a new personality with each regeneration.
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Review by Hayden Black
Hayden Black is the award-winning British star/writer/producer behind Goodnight Burbank (“Better than 99% of the stuff on TV” – USA Today”), the first-ever scripted half-hour comedy series made for Hulu and then licensed – the day it premiered – by Mark Cuban for his cable channel HDNet. Goodnight Burbank and his other original online work – including Abigail’s Teen Diary & The Occulterers – have won Webby, iTunes and Yahoo awards, been viewed in the multi-millions, and taught in college courses.
The press has dubbed him a “web sensation” (LA Times), “ridiculously funny” (Time Out) and “one of Internet comedy’s brightest stars” (The Guardian). He’s a proficient tweeter and has been reprinted on the home pages of the New York Times, CNN, Time Magazine, Hollywood Reporter, Fox News, and more.
He contributed to a book entitled “Behind The Sofa; Celebrity Memories of Dr. Who“, named by Amazon UK one of its “Ten Best Books of 2013.” He was also a regular on-air contributor to BBC America’s TV series “The Brit List,” wrote for the UK animated TV comedy “Mashed”, and appears regularly on panels at Gallifrey One.
Photo Credit: BBC Doctor Who
