Who Review: "World Enough and Time" (Series 10, Episode 11)

WARNING: SPOILERS, sweetie.

Well, I think the most important information we can take away from this episode is that the sonic screwdriver also doubles as a marker.

After a quick opening that shows a future scene of the Doctor regenerating (and apparently not being happy about it), our Time Lord protagonist decides to give Missy a test to prove if she is really turning to the good guys’ side. They find a 400-mile-long ship in distress – caught in the clutches of a black hole and trying to escape – where Missy pretends to be the Doctor (or “Doctor Who” as she cheekily calls herself) with Bill and Nardole as her companions (or “disposables” to Missy). But this training exercise goes south fast when Bill is shot and taken to the back of the ship to be repaired. But because of the time dilation effect from the black hole, time is moving faster at the back than at the front. So Bill must wait for years for the Doctor as the other passengers of the ship are slowly being transformed into nightmarish creatures in order to survive, while from the Doctor’s perspective, it’s only been a few minutes.

Another fascinating concept from Series 10, this time using a real scientific phenomenon: time dilation. Basically, the gravitational pull from a black hole is so dense that the closer one gets to it, the slower time moves. It’s a very trippy, timey-wimey effect, and even more bizarre is that it can happen in real life.

The atmosphere in this episode is terrifying. The back of the ship is this run-down, smog-infested city where the despair can be felt in every moment we spend with Bill. The people have given up on hope so hard that they are painfully augmenting themselves with surgical technologies in order to survive and try to take back the ship. Slowly, the human-like passengers of the ship are transformed into something that wouldn’t be out of place in American Horror Story, with gauze covering their faces and only being able to communicate in creepy, monotone, Steven Hawking-like voice processors.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing the birth of the Cybermen.

This season on Botched...

Well, the Mondassian Cybermen, anyway. See, the Cybermen that we’ve been seeing on the show since 2006 are from an alternate universe where humans were upgraded to become Cybermen. The original Cybermen – introduced in 1966 – were from Earth’s sister planet Mondas, but we’ve never really seen how or why the Mondassians decided to transform themselves into one of the series’ most recurring monsters. Now we know, and the explanation is both terrifying and heartbreaking.

The Cybermen are honestly one of my favorite monsters on the show, but I’ve never found them particularly scary. They have a similar desire to assimilate (or “upgrade”) people into their collective like the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation. But unlike the Borg, they don’t have a scary zombie-like appearance, instead always looking like some clunky robot henchmen from a comic book. While they can be terrifying in how they can so easily make people lose their identities, innately, they’re barely spooky.

Now the Mondassian Cybermen on the other hand…yeesh. Even before this episode aired, I had looked upon pictures of the original 1966 Cybermen and got immediately creeped out. Their look was striking; opting for a more surgical, still-kind-of-human look than the more robotic one we’re used to.  It was obviously very low budget, but the lack of money they could put into their design just made them scarier by plopping them right into the uncanny valley. Everything about them was human, but off, even in the way they spoke. And this episode adds in the revelation of how they’re converted (that it’s a much slower process than what we see now), and that during their whole existences, they are in constant pain.

Before this episode, the Cybermen always scored about a 2.5 or a 3 with me on the Moffat Monster Scare-o-meter™. But with the reintroduction of the Mondassian Cybermen, these gauze-covered gearheads nicely score 4.5 Moffs, cemented them as the scariest monsters this season.

But those handle-headed humanoids aren’t the only familiar faces returning in this episode. As advertised, we also see the return of the Master (played by John Simm), and naturally, he gets to interact with his past self. Apparently Missy doesn’t remember being on this ship when she was him, so it’ll be interesting to see what happened. Also, we’ll hopefully get some answers as to why the Master is suddenly on bad terms with the Doctor after their team-up in “The End of Time”, and how Simm regenerated into Gomez to begin with.

"It's actually 'Doctor Whom.'"

The Master’s return and the reveal of the Cybermen are both great moments in the episode, but I kind of wish they hadn’t revealed all of this in the advertisements prior. Don’t get me wrong, the Cybermen are still terrifying, and the build-up to them is excruciatingly teasing. And I honestly didn’t see it coming that Bill’s friend Mr. Razor was really the Master in disguise all along, so his appearance was a bit of a surprise.

But I still think it would have been more effective if everything was kept super hush-hush right up until the episode’s ending. Imagine going in blind thinking this was just going to be an episode where the Doctor tries to teach Missy how to be good. Then Bill is shot, and you’re sucked into the mystery of what the people around her are becoming. Maybe you’ll piece it together along the way that this is the birth of the Cybermen. Then just when you think the reintroduction of the Cybermen is the big reveal of the episode – WHAM! – suddenly the Master is there and seemingly turning Missy back to the dark side.

Were nothing about the Cybermen or the Master revealed long before this episode aired, this could have been one of the most gut-punching, reveal-heavy episodes in recent Doctor Who history. But alas, we all saw it coming and were just sitting around knowing the answers ahead of time.

Oh, and Bill becomes a Cyberman. Should’ve probably mentioned that other wham moment earlier. Whoops. But yes, the Doctor’s plucky new sidekick has been converted into one of the first Mondassian Cybermen after waiting years for the Doctor to come and rescue her. The moment when she finally comes face to face with the Doctor again and only repeats “I waited” is heartbreaking. I don’t know if this will remain Bill’s fate – as it still hasn’t been revealed if Mackie is staying on for the next season – but if this is how Bill and the Doctor’s adventures end, it is suitably tragic.

In an episode written by showrunner Steven Moffat, it’s fitting that it contains abundances of two of his trademarks: tearjerking moments, and nightmare fuel. And they both hit home very well with what heartstrings they’re trying to pluck at (or, rather, hammer at). I can honestly say that this is probably the best episode of the season thus far. It reminds me a lot of last season’s “Heaven Sent”, another penultimate episode of the season that set a lot of high standards for the next finale. I just wish that those big reveals weren’t already spoiled by the advertisements.

Apparently this story will not only be continued into next week, but into this year’s Christmas special – Capaldi’s final episode – as well, turning the Twelfth Doctor’s final adventure into an epic three-parter. And let me tell you how stoked I am for this and to see how the mystery of Twelve’s regeneration unravels.

Michelle Gomez and John Simm in: The Odd Couple.

Final verdict: 9/10.

NEXT WEEK: The Series 10 finale, but not the Twelfth Doctor’s final bow. Also, my review of Series 10 overall.

Who Review: "The Eaters of Light" (Series 10, Episode 10)

WARNING: SPOILERS, sweetie.

You guys ever see the movie Outlander? Basically, a human-like alien crash lands on Earth and teams up with some Norse warriors to fight an alien monster. This episode just reminds me a lot of that movie. Randomness over. Onto the episode review!

The Doctor takes Bill and Nardole back to 2 AD to show them what happened to the Ninth Roman Legion, who mysteriously vanished somewhere in Scotland. While Bill and the remainder of the Legion try to escape the jaws of a light-eating monster, the Doctor and Narole stumble upon a clan of Scottish warriors – who are in a blood feud with the Romans – and a doorway to another dimension – the home of the Eaters of Light.

This is a darker, slower, more contemplative episode than others in this season – or really others I’ve seen in recent Doctor Who – and I think it benefits the story very well. The atmosphere is gloomy and shadowed, fitting for an adventure where permanent darkness is an imminent threat.

The threat itself – the titular “Eater of Light” (singular) – is an okay monster…when it’s in the shadows. For a good part of the episode, you don’t really see the monster, only brief glimpses here and there. Mostly, it’s just its tentacle-like tongues lashing out to eat people. It doesn’t feel like the episode goes to great lengths to hide the monster’s appearance, as there’s not really a big dramatic reveal once the episode allows it to be seen.

But when we do get to see it, the Eater of Light becomes a little disappointing. The design isn’t particularly inspired, with it looking like a cross between an alligator, an elk, and that alien wolf-thing from Avatar. Plus, the CGI used to make it is not great. So when these Roman soldiers and Scottish warriors with pretty realistic costumes and props go up against this thing, it looks entirely out of place, like they dropped a Skyrim dragon in the middle of a History Channel reenactment.

An accurate portrayal of what happens when someone offers a different opinion on the Internet.

When it’s in the dark, the Eater of Light scores 3 Moffs out of 5 on the Moffat Monster Scare-o-meter™. But outside of the shadows, it unfortunately drops to about a 2.

However, I will say that some of the visuals for the interdimensional doorway were pretty cool, especially those fish-things swimming around the nexus of the portal. Really gives the whole thing an ethereal, mystical vibe.

That’s probably the best way I can describe the episode: mystical. Doctor Who, by definition, is a sci-fi show. But with how ridiculous some of the concepts are (regeneration, a box that’s bigger on the inside, a screwdriver than can do anything, etc.) an argument can be made for it to be a fantasy show as well. The Matt Smith seasons were especially notable for having a fairy tale vibe to them. This episode’s story has people wielding swords fighting a dragon-like monster coming from a mysterious portal. All of this serves to give the episode a different feel and atmosphere than ones that came before it.

The ending shows one of the Doctor’s greatest strengths, but also one of his greatest weaknesses: his willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good. He believes that with his long lifespan and nigh-immortality, he is the only one who can hold back the Eaters of Light in the portal for millennia to prevent them from devouring the sun and stars. It’s not even an ego thing: he truly believes that he is the best line of defense against things that go bump in the night. It’s only when the Romans and Scots step up and remind the Doctor that this is their birthright – their fight – that he steps away. Despite being Earth’s age-old protector, there are some battles that humans need to fight for themselves.

It ties in well to the episode’s theme of children. The Romans and Scots are all young child soldiers, the only remainders of their lost armies. The Doctor and Bill both tell them to grow up, face their fears, and fight their own battles. But even still, the Doctor tries to defend them and take the burden of fighting the monsters upon himself. Humans are still his children, and he’ll always be there to protect them. But all children have to grow up, and the Romans and Scots truly stopped being bickering children when they stepped into the portal and into eternity.

The Doctor vs. New Glow-in-the-Dark Twizzlers

But there’s a bit of a logic problem with the ending involving the rules of the portal. Time movies slower outside the portal than in it. The Doctor enters it early in the episode for two seconds, but when he comes out, Nardole informs him that he’d been gone for two days. So even if the Romans and Scots fight the monsters until their last breath, and even if a thousand years outside would only be a few months or so inside, there would still be an end. The armies would die eventually, even if it would take an incredibly long time, and unless they killed the monsters, they would be free to enter our world and continue their feast of all light.

Also, the episode throws in a thing about crows talking, like this is Game of Thrones or something (the books, not the show). Crows in the past are shown being able to repeat simple phrases like parrots, and by the end, a crow is taught to repeat the name of the leader of the Scottish warriors: Kar. So I guess that means that when crows say “caw”, they’re really saying “Kar.” And crows can still speak, I guess. I don’t really know how to feel about this. It’s not like the episode is trying to explain some big mystery of the universe, it’s explaining why crows say “caw" inside an episode explaining what happened to a lost Roman legion. It’s not really something we needed, but I guess now we have that explanation.

And the Missy plotline continues to be tacked onto the end of an otherwise unrelated episode, giving us a few minutes of this story after the main plot has been wrapped up. It’s not really super distracting, but I wish they had worked it into the main plots of episodes like this better. At least with “Empress of Mars”, there was a reason for Missy to enter the story. But whatever, now Missy is possibly going to redeem herself and she’s not exactly sure how to feel about it.

This episode actually had some really good stuff between Missy and the Doctor, showing how the Doctor wants to help Missy repent, but he’s not sure if it’s a good idea. But he’s willing to try if it means that he’ll have his friend back after all these years. This could be a big change for Doctor Who and the character dynamic between the Master and the Doctor, and I really hope that the show doesn’t completely reverse it when Missy or Capaldi regenerates (assuming Missy does regenerate).

"We made friendship bracelets."

“The Eaters of Light” is a very atmospheric and eerie episode that unfortunately is weakened by its main threat (extra disappointing because IT’S IN THE TITLE OF THE EPISODE). There’s some good character stuff between the Romans and the Scots, especially with the parallels between their cultures. The scene where everyone is able to understand each other thanks to the TARDIS’s translator field ends up being pretty poignant. And it peppers in a few good speeches from Bill and the Doctor. Episode writer Rona Munro is responsible for writing the last story of the classic Doctor Who series before it was cancelled, and it's good to see she hasn't lost her touch over the years. Let's just hope the show lasts long enough this time to give her a chance to write more episodes like this.

Final verdict: 8/10.

NEXT WEEK: The two-part season finale begins, featuring the return of the original 1966 Cybermen and the Master played by John Simm.