Clara goes to the dark side, with dark secrets revealed in Dark Water

Brid-Aine says: So that was honestly unexpected. Danny Pink dies. And as Clara says, not in a spectacular fashion, not in a Doctor Who way, just in a regular old death kind of a way. Reminiscent of that deeply moving, almost soundless episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Buffy’s mother dies of just being an older person …

[Zog_but_not_the_first]

Missy = Master

See icon.

But thanks to Brid-Aine for referencing the Buffy episode that remains, for me anyway, the most moving and accurate depiction of the confusing feelings surrounding the death of a parent.

[graeme leggett]

"Machine Man from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis than ever before."

isn't the Maria robot called Maschinenmensch, with mensch translating as 'man' as in mankind rather than 'man' as in not-woman?

[Gio Ciampa]

"Moffatt has set the precedent for Timelords switching gender"

Apart from that time in "The Doctor's Wife"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Moffatt has set the precedent for Timelords switching gender"

Just pointing out before the discussion rages on about whether or not a Time Lord can change sex. The canonical opportunity to do so was offered to The Doctor a year ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U3jrS-uhuo

[Gio Ciampa]

Re: "Moffatt has set the precedent for Timelords switching gender"

Try this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PDyuGoKypk

[stucs201]

Re: "Moffatt has set the precedent for Timelords switching gender"

Or in Moffat's first Dr Who script.

No, not Blink - this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do-wDPoC6GM

[mafoo]

well...

The master didn't regenerate - but his wife was seen taking his ring, so his essence could have just possessed his wife (or someone else) as it has possessed other people in the past.

[TRT]

Re: well...

Or he could have had a can of Karn-a-Cola.

[Keith Langmead]

Re: "Moffatt has set the precedent for Timelords switching gender"

Indeed, the Doctor has already said that The Corsair regenerated as both men and women, so while the Doctor hasn't yet it doesn't mean he can't. Same as how he hasn't yet regenerated as ginger.

"The mark of The Corsair. Fantastic bloke. He had that snake as a tattoo in every regeneration. Didn't feel like himself unless he had that tattoo. Or herself a couple of times. Oo hoo! She was a bad girl!"

[Phoenix50]

Well I loved it..

When she said "well I couldn't go on calling myself Mistress" I thought OMG, it's Romana! Because that's what K9 used to call her. But that makes no sense.. Much like the rest of the series.

Still love it though :-)

[Chad H.]

Re: Well I loved it..

When she said she'd been abandoned, i thought it was Susan.

[Jordan Davenport]

Re: Well I loved it..

I always suspected it was the Master, given there were rumors of [her] reappearance this season, but at that line, I'd considered that too... except for the fact she referred to the Doctor as her boyfriend the very first episode when introduced talking to the clockwork droid. Plus I very much doubt anyone, human or otherwise, would kiss their grandfather so intimately. At least I hope they wouldn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Well I loved it..

except for the fact she referred to the Doctor as her boyfriend the very first episode when introduced talking to the clockwork droid.

Which raises the question of why the Master and Cybermen would want to save a clockword droid ?

Although he had repaired his systems with some organic components and was technically thus a cyberman his brain was mechanical and hence he wasn't compatible for conversion into a Cyberman.

As we now know Missy is the Master I suppose we just have to assume the boyfriend remark was meant to be a contraction of boyhood friend - unless of course the young Doctor and Master had a much closer relationship than has hitherto been hinted at.

[Psyx]

Re: Well I loved it..

"I always suspected it was the Master, given"...

...the obvious name and Moffat's inability to create NEW bad guys, and his endless recycling of the same old bad guys, time and time again?

A woman off-the-grid Timelord popping up and raising new questions would have been good. Moffat pulling a 'never mind how many regens he's had, lets do some gender swapping, that will be daring' was not.

The best 'reveal' of the episode was the company logo. sadly, that had already been utterly undermined by the BBC's trailers. /facepalm.

"You tell me if you understand the half of it. Missy has apparently figured out a way to grab dying minds as they exit dying bodies"

I suspect that it's a bit different and that he's actually alive and ok, and maybe the ambulance crew took the body to the secret lair instead of the morgue. Hence the 'souls' have to be conned into physical cybermanship. This - of course - makes ZERO sense as regards earlier episodes in the series, but Moffat repeatedly undermines his own canon on a whim, and assumes that 'family show' means 'watchers are morons' [cf: Weeping angels that are now perfectly capable of looking at each other].

[lorisarvendu]

Re: Well I loved it..

"...the obvious name and Moffat's inability to create NEW bad guys, and his endless recycling of the same old bad guys, time and time again?"

RTD's attitude towards bringing back past foes was that if you had a monster in a story, and a previous one would fit the bill, you might as well use it for purposes of economy and a free tip of the hat to the fans. This was his reasoning behind using the Macra in "Gridlock".

Same here. If you're going to have a female villain with a human consciousness-snaffling hard drive, why bother inventing both when Doctor Who's rich history has already got what you need on the shelf - evil Time Lords and the Matrix. And once you've decided to go down that route, why invent a new Time Lady when you've already got several to choose from (Susan, Romana, Rodan, the Rani). Hell, why not really have your cake and eat it - have the Master change sex!

You please the fans, and the casual viewer who remembers John Simm from 5 years back, and let's face it, when Missy was all "Yes I'm a Time Lord and you know who I am", wasn't every hardened fan screaming "It's the Rani! Susan! The Inquisitor!" at the screen? How disappointing would it have been for her then to announce herself as some Time Lord we'd never even heard of?

I've seen several comments that seem to imply Moffat is lazy for simply using the Master and not bothering to invent a new foe. WTF? Are we supposed to believe that it would be so incredibly difficult to just create a new Time Lord and give her an evil motive that Moffat just thought "Hell, I can't be arsed to type anything today, let's just make her the Master."??

[4ecks]

Well I didn't see that coming

Now that's how to do a good Dr Who episode.

Fast paced, but no running around.

Witty and menacing.

And... two of the great Baddies at the same time!

[Tapeador]

Missy

was pretty good but I still think Derek Jacobi was the best in recent memory. He didn't do that cartoon manic-y thing. He was just sinister as fuck.

[Cthonus]

Re: Missy

Yeah. I prefer my Master to be as suave and sophisticated as Roger Delgado's. Proper devils like Fu Manchu never needed to girn to camera to look menacing, or ham it up like the infamous Zaroff or Soldeed death scenes...

I always though John Sim played the character as if he was brain damaged rather than truely, awesomely bad-ass.

[David L Webb]

Re: Missy

I always though John Sim played the character as if he was brain damaged rather than truely, awesomely bad-ass.

That was supposedly because the drumming he was hearing in his head was getting worse.

However the cause of that drumming was identified as a signal from Gallifrey intended to allow the Timelords to escape from the last days of the timewar in End Of Time Part 2. So I'd have expected that after that the signal would either have stopped or the Master, having identifed its source, would have found someway of blocking it. Therefore I'd have expected a later regeneration such as Missy to be less mentally unstable and more like the earlier classic series incarnations of the Master.

[lorisarvendu]

Re: Missy

"Therefore I'd have expected a later regeneration such as Missy to be less mentally unstable and more like the earlier classic series incarnations of the Master."

Ah but how do we know Missy is a later regeneration? If the Doctor can meet himself from previously in his time stream, why can't he meet a pre-Time War Master? Bet your bottom dollar Moffat's considered that at one time or another.

[David L Webb]

Are these actually cybermen ?

What good is an angry soul trapped in a Cybersuit? Break them first or get them to go willingly, into what they believe is a beautiful but fake afterlife.

The cybermen haven't seemed to care much about their donor's willingness to be transformed in the past. They seemed to have been able to get rid of their emotions during the transformation process easily enough. Why the need for the souls to agree to "delete" themselves and surely once they woke up in the cybersuit they would quickly see they weren't in a beautiful afterlife.

Also are these actually cybermen - with human brains in the cybersuit - or completly mechanical ?

If the former how are they removing the newly dead's brains to transplant - especially if the dead can still supposedly feel cold because their body is in a morgue freezer.

If either the brain or any other parts of the bodies are being used in the construction of the cybermen then you'd expect people to notice (those carrying out autopsies for starters) unless it were done long after they had died ie they beamed the body out mid-cremation or after it was buried. But as far as I am aware the timelords never had any special abilities to resurrect the long dead so I'm not sure the brains or other organs would be much use grafted into a cybersuit.

If on the otherhand they are purely mechanical then why do they need souls ?

I'm sure lots of people will say I'm over-analysing it but I'm just not sure the premise is consistent with the histories of either the original or new cybermen.

[Suricou Raven]

Re: Are these actually cybermen ?

The suits seem to operate pretty well without anything living in them in some past episodes too. It has been suggested by some fans that the requirement for a person inside is largely cultural. Even cybernetic creations may have some psychological issues: If they aren't a person, then what are they?

[TRT]

Re: Are these actually cybermen ?

Provided these cybermen haven't, you know, gone rusty or something, sitting in all that water for a few years.

[Carl W]

The best episode of the series so far IMHO.

[JonP]

Which is/was entirely the problem with this series. Apart from Listen (? - the one with the hands under the bed) the rest have been ever so meh... saying that the bank one was OK too, but still 3 out of 11... not a good ratio.

[David L Webb]

The best episode of the series so far IMHO.

Unfortunately I think it was a bit of a missed opportunity. The concept of the newly dead still being able to feel what was happening to their body had great horror potential but practically disappeared.

It would have been easy enough to make this seem plausible - individual cells have been found to be viable at least 17 days after death

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n6/full/ncomms1890.html

so the concept of a soul tied to the body and still receiving sensations from such surviving cells isn't totally inconceivable.

One possibility would be to have had an advanced civilisation attempting to alleviate such suffering by separating souls from their bodies and attentuating the sensations they were receiving from their newly dead bodies. Then the Master having regenerated as Missy but still suffering from the instabilty caused by his last botched resurrection could have taken over the establishment in order to secretly feed off the vestiges of life energy of the saved souls. Thus setting up the Doctor for working out how to either defeat the Master without destroying the establishment or face the dilemma of whether to condemn souls to suffer as their bodies decayed by destroying the establishment in order to defeat the Master or to allow the Master to continue to consume some of their remaining lifeforce.

Instead we have Cybermen.

[illiad]

" individual cells have been found to be viable at least 17 days after death"

only trouble is, the brain that feels the pain, dies after a few minutes...

please dont confuse 'timelord tech' with real life, at least until it's possible, in a few millennia... :P

Another 'problem' .. - Danny's body is still in the morgue.. It is his mind that is in 3W.. some kind of 'matrix' thing...

but as the doc said..."fakery!!" :)

Babylon 5 had similar.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_Hunter_%28Babylon_5%29

so next week the doc has to kill the Cybermen, reverse the 3W, and rescue Danny... though he may just 'wake up' in the morgue... :P

[David L Webb]

only trouble is, the brain that feels the pain, dies after a few minutes...

please dont confuse 'timelord tech' with real life, at least until it's possible, in a few millennia... :P

I didn't say it was real life - just that it could be made plausible for a work of fiction if you could swallow a soul having a limited interaction with the body independently of the brain. After all anyone who believes in a soul surviving after death into an after-life is half way there already since the soul would be existing without any connection to either body or brain.

(and after all the Doctor must be at least open to the possibility of a soul and afterlife or why would he have even tried to find Danny after he had died ? )

[TRT]

"so the concept of a soul tied to the body and still receiving sensations from such surviving cells isn't totally inconceivable."

And there's no Death, no "Grim Reaper", to come and snicker-snack the cord with his scythe sharp enough to slice atoms apart.

[Ugotta B. Kiddingme]

I would go so far as to say

that if you throw out the forest and moon stories, this whole series has been one of the best in the current generation. Yes, there have been some pretty significant blunders in writing and character development but Capaldi's superb acting ability has, for me at least, completely overcome all but the two abysmal stories mentioned at the beginning of my post. There were even a few redeeming bits in those two stories - albeit mostly snappy one-liners from Capaldi, which furthers my point. Supremely interested to see which part of the cliff we will be left dangling from next week.

[Chad H.]

Well, she isn't Roger Delgardo... but then again, nobody is.

Definately at the Anthony Ainley level though.

[xeroks]

Fav moment

Was when the doors slid together to receal what the symbol meant. I'm sure the sound of several things clicking was audible.

[Suricou Raven]

Re: Fav moment

A moment that would have been far more effective had it been a genuine revelation, like the 'dark water' reveal. They did a great job of forshadowing, laying just enough hints for people to speculate, right up until the end of the previous episode - when they gave everything away by showing cybermen in the post-episode teaser.

There's no fun in spotting the cyberman symbol if you already know there will be cybermen along before the episode is over!

[The Indomitable Gall]

Re: Fav moment

They also showed the cybermen in the thumbnail pic on iPlayer. Way to kill the tension, BBC.

[trance gemini]

that TARDIS control room thing ...

... looks like the inside of a fusion reactor

that fusion reactor thing ... looks like the inside of a black hole

defrag your matrix data slice before bed,

just in case you wake up dead

[Andrew Jones 2]

Hated it -

really was hoping the whole afterlife thing was going to turn out to be something gripping and new - but no - the usual enemies, now with huge holes in the plotline.

As for it's been done before:

The Library - conciousness' living in a computer.

The Bells of Saint John - uploading people to a data cloud.

Come on Moffatt - bring us something new!

[David L Webb]

As for it's been done before:

Even the idea of using the dead to construct the doctors enemies isn't new - though that was with the Daleks

From the classic series

Revelation of the Daleks (Daleks constructed from material from the cryogenically frozen dead)

and in the new series

Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways

(Though since the humans were transmatted from the Gamestation rather than disintegrated when they lost the games it wasn't entirely clear if they were dead when their cells were harvested to construct the Daleks)

[Suricou Raven]

When it was referred to as the 'nethersphere' I was hoping it would be revealed as a dyson sphere - the work of future civilisation discovering the lack of an afterlife, and finding the concept of death so appalling they built such a vast structure and started time-scooping the people of their past into it at the moment of death to save them.

[Tom 7]

Nethersphere

I was worried it might have a twin and form the Kardashian system.

[Psyx]

"When it was referred to as the 'nethersphere' I was hoping it would be revealed as a dyson sphere"

Yeah, that also was a bit lame. Though not as lame as another story being based in London.

The Doc really needs to look at his TARDIS, because it seems to have lost the ability to tell him when it's landed in 21st century London.

[Anonymous Coward]

An entire universe of space and time in which to let the imagination run riot, and the big mystery turns out to be the same old villains invading the Earth again like they always do, with some unconvincing fantasy nonsense thrown in for good measure.

It's lucky for Moffat that most people seem to have very low expectations.

[lorisarvendu]

"An entire universe of space and time in which to let the imagination run riot, and the big mystery turns out to be the same old villains invading the Earth again like they always do, with some unconvincing fantasy nonsense thrown in for good measure."

Yeah because Doctor Who never did that before Moffat took over. Well apart from "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", "The Seeds of Death", "The Invasion", "The Web of Fear", "Terror of the Autons", "The Sea Devils", "Day of the Daleks", Warriors of the Deep", "Remembrance of the Daleks", "Silver Nemesis", "Rose", "Rise of the Cybermen", "Army of Ghosts"...

[Graham Marsden]

I'll score you a Miss on that one...

... Because they could have done so much better had Missy been The Rani.

Oh and, PS, Dr Skarosa? Knock off the SA and what planet name do you get...?

[Suricou Raven]

Re: I'll score you a Miss on that one...

I was really hoping for th Rani.

I was hoping more when she was revealed as a time lady.

I was quite sure of it when she referred to the doctor having left her for dead, just as he had for the Rani so many series ago.

And then she ruined it.

The Master is a great villain, yes. But the Rani is something else: She's a great villain, who had the misfortune to appear only in some episodes that were deeply flawed and generally crap for other reasons. The concept deserves better treatment. The Master might try to take over the universe - but the Rani would take it apart, just so she can learn how it was put together.

[TRT]

Re: I'll score you a Miss on that one...

Maybe Earth. I thought it might be a protagonist of EVP, but no.

[ukgnome]

You tell me.....

....if you understand the half of it.

Ok pay attention - the time lords have a technology called the matrix. Yes like that one but they got there first. It's a hard drive for people's souls. The time lords use it as a repository of knowledge.

I'm not used to you write in a balanced way Brid, so you caught me off guard. I think that's the least trollish thing you have written.

[MrDamage]

How?

"And, how was it that the Doctor pushes open the doors to the mausoleum to walk down the steps of St Pauls’ in Central London? More “Time Lord” technology?"

Tardis perhaps? Bigger on the inside as it is on the outside, as we have quite often heard repeated so many times in previous episodes.

With fancy schmancy teleportation doodads, the general public walking into thnecathedral could easily be whisked away to some room that looks like the interior of the cathedral proper, while those with the correct credentials enter the 3W complex

If the Master was trapped on Gallifrey, then not only would he have had access to the TL hard drive, then he had just as much access to a Tardis. Being the Doctor's equal, he too could have just over-ridden safety protocols, flicked a few switch, smacked the console with a pipe wrench (or shoe as per the threat that was in this episode), and burst his way out of his prison, just as we see the Doctor doing on several occasions.

[TRT]

Re: How?

I think they cut a scene of the Doctor running up countless flights of stairs, whilst Missy takes the lift.

[mark.d]

sub par Peter F Hamilton Lite.

It is pretty much The Doctor shoveled into PFH's Night's Dawn Trilogy with Al Capone replaced by Cybermen, written by sub-par fanfic writers. And bureaucratic death (which has never, ever, been done before.)

And because it is the end of the season lets throw in The Master...

I cannot believe the relationship between Clara and Danny, it is just really extremely badly written. No love, no passion, just meh. Pretty much the definition of a relationship that is doomed to failure, through either falling apart or Danny throwing toys out of pram with regards to Clara's continuing association with The Doctor (particularly after the "as you say, SIR!; as you wish SIR!") - Amy and Rory's relationship was much better defined and realised.

The confrontation with the Doctor at the beginning (did we forget the finger-snaps?), it is all just really bad, bad, bad.

Capaldi and Coleman have had some seriously poor writing to deal with this season - the next episode and Christmas special could seal the fate of Doctor Who under Moffatt...

[Psyx]

Re: sub par Peter F Hamilton Lite.

"I cannot believe the relationship between Clara and Danny, it is just really extremely badly written. No love, no passion, just meh. "

No, there's love. We know that because they say it and cry. They must be in love because she stabs the Doctor in the back because she has a paddy about him falling under a car. I think we're supposed to tkae it as read or something though because - as you say - there's sod all happened on screen to make us believe they have any emotions for each other, aside from some empty words. It's utterly unconvincing.

[lorisarvendu]

Re: sub par Peter F Hamilton Lite.

Hmmm...but when we got RTD's attempt at well-rounded characters with believable relationships, certain corners of fandom derided it as soap. Make up your minds people!

[Vinyl-Junkie]

Was I the only one...

...who saw the Danny Pink killed a child thing weeks ago? I thought it was obvious in the episode in which he was introduced - ex-Army, working in a school, goes all blank when asked by the kids if he's ever killed anyone... Then we get other similar pointers in later episodes. And in the Forests of the Night we get the whole thing about how getting the children home to their parents was the most important, and how adventures elsewhere weren't important, it was the ones right in front of you?

Have to admit though I thought they were setting up a big reveal to Clara, not what actually happened! So kudos to Moffat for that.

Overall I have thought this series is a bit Doctor-Who-lite/Doctor Who by numbers but I've still found it entertaining, Possibly because that's what I expect from it; not deep meaningful SF...

Terminator because there isn't a Cyberman...

[illiad]

Re: Was I the only one...

you need to say that to a soldier that has just come back from Iraq... soldiers are under orders... :(

what would YOU do, when a 7 year old is shooting to kill???

what would you do, when the enemy uses young children to cover their targets etc???

they seem to have no problem putting their children in the line of fire..

they also have huge propaganda that make them believe that the military fighting them are 'devils that eat their own children'... to say nothing about suicide bombers...

And GUYS!!! PLEASE! the people that come to this country are *mostly* peace loving, trying to escape the horrors in the country they came from...

[Vinyl-Junkie]

Re: Was I the only one...

Sorry, it wasn't intended as a criticism of the Army or the tactics in Iraq & Afghanistan; even without insurgents arming kids, when you're fighting in an urban environment, especially doing building clearance, then s*^& happens.

However it's not what everybody, or indeed anybody, signs up for, and, if it happens by accident and the kid actually IS a non-combatant, then I would imagine it can seriously screw you up. Some may cope better than others. This was the sort of background I envisioned for Danny Pink, with him being someone who was struggling to cope with his past, and which the latest episode appears to confirm.

And totally with you on the last paragraph!

[Psyx]

Re: Was I the only one...

"they also have huge propaganda that make them believe that the military fighting them are 'devils that eat their own children'... to say nothing about suicide bombers..."

Move along please: We're trying to talk about Dr. Who.

[Christian Berger]

Female Master was predictable

If you look at one of the scenes in "Last of the Time Lords", you can see a the ring of the Master dropping from his burning corpse being picked up by a female hand with red painted long fingernails. He's probably regenerated that way.

The 3 words "Don't cremate me" were probably a reference of how Timelords find their last resting place.

Come on it doesn't take much to figure that out. Even I could, and I haven't even met the Doctor or have set foot on the UK. All I know about him is from the BBC.

[David L Webb]

Re: Female Master was predictable

If you look at one of the scenes in "Last of the Time Lords", you can see a the ring of the Master dropping from his burning corpse being picked up by a female hand with red painted long fingernails. He's probably regenerated that way.

That was the prison warden Miss Trefusis,as revealed in "The End of Time" where the ring was used to bring back the Master still played by John Simm. Unfortunately for the Master his wife Lucy Saxon interferes in the resurrection process and he is brought back in an unstable state needing to constantly replenish his lifeforce.

See

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_End_of_Time_%28TV_story%29

So although it might have been an opportunity to introduce a Female Master it was one they didn't take advantage of at the time.

[TRT]

Re: Female Master was predictable

Don't cremate me, because it's hard to weld a stainless steel exoskeleton onto a pile of ashes.

[Whitter]

Why the deluisionary start? This is the time lord who doesn't need a key after all!

[illiad]

erm I dont think clara knew that...

[Whiskers]

Tardis keys are more than mere bits of metal, they are part of the Tardis - &/or part of The Doctor. They are only tangentially associated with gaining access to the Tardis.

[Pet Peeve]

Yeah, the CLOISTER BELL went off every time one of the keys hit the lava. They aren't just keys.

[Zog_but_not_the_first]

At last, a good one

I re-watched last night's episode and apart from a few grumps on recycling concepts I enjoyed it. I thought it was Capaldi's best performance to date.

Are the episodes recorded in sequence? It might explain some of the unevenness with performances.

[graeme leggett]

Re: At last, a good one

In times past some have been recorded out of sequence but not so far as I can find out in this case.

his predecessor Matt Smith's introductory episode 11th Hour was in the third production block of that season/series

[graeme leggett]

Re: At last, a good one

Looks like I misread. In the Forest of the Night appears to have been the last one recorded, and Listen and Time Heist were in the production block before Robot of Sherwood.

Sorry for the duff gen.

[The Indomitable Gall]

On the subject of spoilers...

Why does El Reg have the Cybermen spoiler on the subhead on the main page? Surely that's no place for spoilers....

[MrDamage]

Re: On the subject of spoilers...

You mean the "Next Week on Doctor Who" bit at the end of every episode, which clearly shows the cybermen marching down the stairs, wasn't a spoiler, but because it's in El Reg's tagline, it is?

[phil dude]

no steam please...

can we please have no steam noises when the cyber-persons move...?

it is like an old video game that had limited memory...

P.

[J 7]

which Cybermen

Are these Cybus Cybermen or Mondas Cybermen? If Cybus do we get another incursion from Pete's universe through the wormhole in the Torchwood Tower? Thats not so far from St Pauls.

Maybe another visit from Pete and Rose hunting transdimensional Cybermen is on the cards for next week?

[MJI]

Re: which Cybermen

Cybus - Trigger Cybermen

Would be very effective street sweepers.

[TRT]

Re: which Cybermen

Oh no they wouldn't. The streets of London are paved with gold.

[MJI]

Re: which Cybermen

OK Dave

[ShadowDragon8685]

Missy, Master. How did I miss that?

I have to admit, there being two plot twists was something I wasn't expecting. I called "Cybermen" as soon as we saw the sitting skeletons and the Doctor mused about who'd want to keep corpses in such a condition. But the return of the Master, that one took me by surprise.

Generally speaking, you don't expect the Doctor's antagonists to work together, not unless they're coming together in an army of doom to murder him. (And you don't expect the Master to work together with anyone, period.)

Still, this all could have been avoided if the Doctor hadn't forgotten his standard dodge for the "my friend is dead, but if I go save them, the events that made me go save them won't have happened" paradox, that being to simply fake the dead person's death.

And re: Danny having shot a boy? Well, yes, that was a bit cliched, but powerful. It would have been gutsier, cinematically speaking, but probably less sympathetic to most audiences, if instead he'd shot an armed combatant.

[Psyx]

Re: Missy, Master. How did I miss that?

"but powerful"

Not really. Perhaps it could have been if they really explored it for more than 30 seconds. Hey, you killed a kid. Now oyu have to meet them because they want to see you and have requested to. But then they run off inside 5 seconds not saying a word. Yeah... that's not really very powerful. Kind of a waste of time, really.

The dead Ewok in RotJ got more screen-time, and probably had more emotional impact.

Once again: Something had potential but was spoiled by trite writing.

[SteveK]

Re: Missy, Master. How did I miss that?

Perhaps it could have been if they really explored it for more than 30 seconds. Hey, you killed a kid. Now oyu have to meet them because they want to see you and have requested to. But then they run off inside 5 seconds not saying a word. Yeah... that's not really very powerful. Kind of a waste of time, really.

I was pretty sure at the end when Danny is wavering on pressing the button, the reflection in the iPad is of the kid, so I'm guessing he'll be instrumental in saving Danny in part 2 and will therefore have a purpose.

[Psyx]

Re: Missy, Master. How did I miss that?

I missed the reflection. Maybe.

but you can't just write in pointless characters with no decent dialogue a few times and expect the audience to *care* about them or form any emotional bond. Pink is supposed to be an important emotional anchor for one of the lead characters, and on paper has potential, but... I don't care about him. Just as I don't care about most of the cast or their stories. Moffat seems to assume an automatic bond will build based upon the number of fleeting appearances a character makes, but it takes a lot more than that. It takes good characterisation and good writing for those character. We seem to have the former, but the later is scarce in the series at present.

[MJI]

We know Danny survives

As we have already seen some descendants

[stucs201]

Re: We know Danny survives

Unless Clara is already up the duff...

[MJI]

Re: We know Danny survives

Good idea!

[TRT]

"Seb the sinister pen pusher, sympathising with Danny and rolling his eyes like a John Cleese bowler-hatted bureaucrat while gently shepherding the uncomprehending Pink to his fate."

Sounds a little Pythonesque...

Well, what do you think? We can bury her or burn her.

Well, which do you recommend?

Well, they're both nasty. If we burn her, she gets stuffed in the flames, crackle, crackle, crackle, which is a bit of a shock if she's not quite dead, but quick. And then we give you handful of ashes, which you can pretend are hers.

Oh.

Or, if we bury her she gets eaten up by the worms which, as I said before, is a bit of a shock if she's not quite dead.

Fred!

Yeah?

I think we've got an eater.

Right, I'll get the oven on.

[Zog_but_not_the_first]

Upvote for this. I almost thought he was going into the funeral parlour routine. It's fun spotting little quirks like this; Im hoping that a spot of Ollie/Malcolm dialogue will bleed through following the encouraging reference to "a lot of swearing" on the physic paper.

Another reference that tickled me last week was when one of the characters on "Peaky Blinders" (a BBC programme) asked, "Tommy can you hear me?"

[lee harvey osmond]

Unsatisfactory season finale approaching -- please step back from the platform edge

Where was I?

Obvious (to me at least) in the season opener that Missy was The Master, and that what appeared to be the afterlife wasn't. The first person to show up was the chief rubbish robot; robots don't have souls and either don't have an afterlife, or have a different afterlife to living things. [Mmm. We may yet get to discover in what sort of afterlife, if any, Time Lords believe.]

And the swearing thing with the psychic paper. That smacks to me of a hasty script rewrite, of a scene originally between Seb and The Doctor (Addison/Capaldi; Ollie/Malcolm Tucker), and that line was too good to lose.

To get collected by Missy ... well, humans from Robot Of Sherwood don't show up, nor from Flatline, but humans from Into The Dalek do, as does that copper in The Caretaker that we see get blown to carbonised bits by the Skovox Blitzer. Missy is collecting people an instant before they are to be killed, and killed in ways that either destroy or mangle a body in such a way that anybody finding the body, if there is one, will not bother looking at it too closely and then discover it's a replica. A replica which has probably arrived via the same transmat beam that Missy is using to kidnap people.

Danny Pink doesn't quite count. But 'PE' is connected to Clara, whom Missy is exploiting to get to The Doctor. I think we're going to find that Danny Pink is alive and well.

Why did the writers go for the cliché of having Danny kill a child, and not something more nuanced and subtle? I think, precisely because it was unsubtle -- "let's throw in this idea that carries the smallest possible requirements for exposition ***splat***, now, get on with the story". I was expecting Danny Pink to be doing the same job as Jack Harkness in Series 1; the writers then put somebody in position in the Tardis to be a soldier in the series finale, able to run around killing things in a way that The Doctor was not. We might be seeing that again now.

What's with the Matrix Data Slice then? Missy is doing The Matrix with the kidnapped, scanning their memories to inform a holographic environment so that she can manipulate them. The reason why the child that Danny shot doesn't speak could be that Danny never heard him speak, so there's no data from which to synthesise a voice for the hologram of the child.

Or, bearing in mind that Who can be excessively sentimental, it's perhaps more likely that the child isn't dead, and Danny Pink is going to be able to return him alive to the wider world, and free himself from his sense of guilt.

Sooooo why did Missy collect the chief rubbish robot then in Deep Breath? Not a candidate for Cyberconversion. What would a Rubbish Robot make of a Cyberman, or a Cyberman make of a Rubbish Robot?