TV Reviews - Doctor Who 0811 and 0812: Dark Water and Death in Heaven

We already talked about the first part of this episode last week, but what came last week isn't what I would call a review. I'd call it something akin to a summary of points of interest, and interesting those points were. Between the revelation that Missy is the Master, and the startling scene where Clara betrays the Doctor, Dark Water was probably the first really memorable lore episode of the Series. Of course, this week, we will be looking deeper into that episode, and taking a look at the second as well, so we should probably start out be elaborating on some of the points that I made earlier.

I won't be talking any more about Missy being the Master, as this is pretty self-explanatory. I will, however, touch on the Mistress' plan, because aside from the resolution of Clara's time as a companion, the entire episode really is just the Mistress' plan. So was last week's episode, really. So what was Missy's plan? Well, when the Doctor saved Gallifrey, he accidentally saved the Master, too, who was somehow hiding out there. The Master, now the Mistress, was able to escape with a TARDIS, and she went back in time to Earth's past and started capturing the dead minds of humans who had passed in a hard drive called the Necrosphere. Meanwhile she exploited the fears of the modern rich to procure funds to push forward her experiments, which allowed her to create a race of Cybermen who do not need to Cyberconvert living beings, but can Cyberconvert the dead, as long as they have the minds of those dead to implant into the cyber bodies. They do this by raining Cyber Pollen which seeps into the ground and Cyberforms the corpses in graveyards all overt he world into Cybermen, all of which are controlled by a wristband that Missy carries.

Meanwhile, Danny Pink is dead, and his mind is in the Necrosphere, where he is about to delete his emotions, the final prerequisite to becoming a Cyberman (he doesn't realize this, of course, but he does want to stop feeling the pain of his separation from Clara), when he is stopped by a young boy. It turns out that this boy is the reason why Danny gave up being a soldier. He killed this civilian boy by accident while at war. Seeing the boy is enough to stop Danny, and the Cyberforming begins while Danny is still himself. He becomes a Cyberman with all of his memories and personality in tact, and even rescues Clara from the other Cybermen.

Meanwhile, using old Cyberman tech left from the old days, UNIT, still led by Kate Stewart and still including Osgood, both from The Power of Three and the 50th Anniversary (Osgood is dressed as the Eleventh Doctor now rather than the Fourth), detects the appearance of the Cybermen and moves to stop them. They manage to capture the Mistress, but the Cybermen escape. They can fly now. UNIT, of course, also takes the Doctor into custody, as they need his help and are worried that he will flake out on them (which he probably would have). They take him, the Mistress, and TARDIS aboard a plane, where they reveal that the Doctor has been made the President of Earth in times of emergencies. This is all really cool, until the Mistress escapes, kills Osgood, and blows Kate, the TARDIS and the Doctor out into freefall.

The Doctor allows himself to fall to the TARDIS and gets inside, saving himself, but he can't save Kate, which will no doubt haunt him, as her father, Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, was one of the Doctor's few enduring friends. The Doctor has had enough. Soon he, the Mistress, Clara, and Cyber Danny all end up in a London graveyard together, here the newly Cyberformed Cybermen are waiting for information from their Cyber Commander, AKA the one with the wristband, AKA, the Mistress reveals as she hands the device to her old friend/enemy, the Doctor. Missy has given him something that he has always wanted: an army that is unending, as it can recruit the dead after every battle, and which is eternally loyal. Now he can save the universe by conquering it, and realize that he and the Mistress aren't too different, and the Mistress will get her friend back.

Finally, in that moment, the Doctor comes to a realization. All series he has been struggling to decide if he is good or bad, and it had been making him hesitate, but in that moment, he realizes that he is not a truly good man, or a truly bad man, he is exactly the same tree dimensional, gray areas kind of person that he always has been. He knows that he wants that army, but he also knows that he can't have it, so he gives command of the Cybermen to the only good soldier present: Danny Pink. He and the rest of the Cybermen self destruct to stop Missy's final end game, and put an end to this new race of Cybermen all at once. Clara and the Doctor both decide that the Mistress can't go on and do this again, that she must die, and even though Clara offers to do it, the Doctor won't let her. This is important, as Danny accused him earlier in the episode of keeping his soul clean by training companions to dirty themselves in his name. The Doctor's decision to kill Missy himself proves that, while he does show his companions that hard choices must be made, he will make the hardest decisions himself when he feels he can.

In a last ditch effort to save herself, Missy tells the Doctor that she knows where Gallifrey is, and this is probably true. She then tells him that it has returned to its original place in the cosmos. This is probably false, but the Doctor resolves to finish her anyway. He doesn't have to, though, since before he can fire, a single remaining Cyberman vaporizes Missy. The Doctor and Clara run to this Cyberman and learn, before he flies off, that he also caught Kate and brought her safely to the ground. After all, if anyone could resist giving up his emotions to Missy for decades, it was Kate's father. Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart is once again walking the Earth, maybe as it's new silent guardian during times while the Doctor is away?

From here, things take a turn from triumphant to tragic. It turns out the wristband the controlled the Cybermen also had another function that the Doctor discovered during the exchange with Missy in the graveyard, and it was the other reason that he gave the device to Danny. The wristband can restore one, and only one, person stored in the Necrosphere to life. He expects Danny to bring himself back, but instead Danny saves the civilian boy. Of course Clara lies to the Doctor and tells him that she and Danny are living happily, just as the Doctor lies and tells her that he found Gallifrey right where the Mistress said it would be. They have both realized that they can't travel together anymore, and neither wants to other to feel sorry for them in the end.

Complicated, I know. I mean, that up there is a lot of words.

Complicated or not, though, these episodes were great. For the first time this Series, aside from maybe Robots of Sherwood, this episode felt like an episode of Doctor Who, and not an episode of a similar series. The Doctor has realized what he needed to to start acting himself again, and get himself back on track as a fun character, and I really hope that Moffet and his guys take this opportunity and make the best of it (but more about that in my detailed look at the Twelfth Doctor, coming (probably) tomorrow). There are only three things that disappointed me in this episode.

Firstly, I don't like that they straight up killed off the Mistress. I realize that her entire shtick is that you think she's dead, and then she's not, so she can come back, and that part of the reason for turning the Master into the Mistress was to test the waters regarding the possible female Doctor that many fans, including myself, want, but it still felt like far too straightforward a resolution for the least straightforward franchise villain. I also didn't like that the anti-Doctor dream team theory regarding Missy's recruitment of dead characters was so wrong, and that all of the dead became just generic Cybermen. However, I did like the resolution of the Doctor's uncertainty plot, even if I think it came later than it should have, and I liked the Mistress' plan. It was totally insane, and completely her. The resolution of Clara's and the Doctor's time together was as tragic as you might expect, very well acted, and appropriately emotional, and I liked it and hated it both. We even got something of a confirmation that Missy's affection for the Doctor runs both ways, as after the Mistress inadvertently helps the Doctor realize that he is who he is, he actually kisses her.

This episode was great, from the performances, to the pacing, to the writing which was far less needlessly complicated than Moffat and his people could have made it. It felt like the end of one thing, and the beginning of another, and gave a sense that there are many possibilities ahead. At one point Clara is keeping herself alive amidst a group of Cybermen by pretending to be a female version of the Doctor, and therefor valuable to them. Not only is this more hint-dropping, but to convince the Cybermen that she is the Doctor, Clara lists off a bunch of the Doctor's personal history, including many unresolved plot points that I think a lot of fans thought that the writers had forgotten about. Hints as to some stories for next Series perhaps?

The pacing of the episodes is where I have my third fundamental issue. The first half took things slow, built things up, and allowed the score and imagery to build suspense and it was a better episode for it. While the second part was still good, it seemed too rushed in places, and relied more on action and dialogue, and wasn't as creepy or intriguing. I can't really explain what I mean beyond that. You'll have to watch the episodes to see what I mean, and I really do think you should. As I've said many times, because it's a little surprising, these episodes are good, and I recommend them. I give part one a 9, and part two a 7, giving the two-parter a collective average score of 8 out of 10. Not just a really good Series Eight episode, but a good episode of Doctor Who overall.

Oh, and be sure to hang around during the credits of part two for probably the best setup for a Christmas special on TV ever.