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.