WARNING: SPOILERS, sweetie.
Well, here we are. The end of Series 10. Not quite the end of
Peter Capaldi’s turn as the Doctor but…yeah, I’m still gonna need some Kleenex.
Following the events of last week’s episode, Bill is still a
Cyberman, and Missy has apparently turned back to the dark side at the
influence of her past self. But with the Cybermen approaching and constantly
upgrading, and with our protagonists trapped on a floor of the ship that has
been turned into a solar farm, the Doctor must work together with his enemies,
allies, and a colony of farmers to fight off the Cyberman threat. And as the
title implies, the Doctor will fall…
Okay, he won’t fall permanently
because the Twelfth Doctor will still be around for the Christmas special
before regenerating, but you get my point.
This was definitely a more action-packed episode of Doctor Who than what we normally get.
Tons of explosions, tons of fighting Cybermen, and tons of the Doctor showing
off how dark and scary he can be when the people he cares about are threatened.
As stated before, Bill is still a Cyberman, but she still
retains her personality from before she was converted. Hence, she remains on
the Doctor’s side. The way they film some of Bill’s scenes in this episode is
incredibly clever, especially when she’s first introduced in the episode. She
doesn’t realize she’s a Cyberman, so we initially see her from her point of
view – a normal human – while everyone else reacts as if she’s a monster. From
then, the episode keeps shifting back and forth from showing Bill as a human
and Bill as a Cyberman. I kind of wish it had just kept her as a Cyberman for
the rest of the episode after the reveal, but then we wouldn’t have had the
rest of Pearl Mackie’s emotional performances, so I can’t really complain too
much.
The two Masters also have great chemistry with one another.
Any time more than one Doctor get together, they often spend a lot of time
bickering and insulting each other before becoming buddies. But with the
Masters, they start off on much better terms, even in a flirty, quasi-romantic
state. It’s a really wonderful way of showing how much the Master is in love
with his/herself, and makes this multi-Master story a creepy, uncomfortable
antithesis to a multi-Doctor story.
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| "It appears we're being used to reference Bioshock--" "--Infinite, yes, I can see that." |
However, I’m a but disappointed how little of the episode is
spent on the Masters teaming up against the Doctor, as they spend the majority
of the episode either working alongside him or trying to escape together. A
story with the Masters working together is what I would ideally want from a
multi-Master story, as two versions of one of the Doctor’s greatest enemy
working together would have provided a suitable threat to end the Twelfth
Doctor’s tenure. But, I’m fortunate we still got a ton of great material
involving the Masters’ interactions.
Oh, and let’s not forget the Master’s death – both of them! This
is exactly how the Master would die: stabbing himself/herself in the back and
providing a timey-wimey, Bootstrap Paradox mutually assured destruction. I kind
of wish that with Missy’s death, the Doctor would have been there to at least
say his goodbyes and not leave on a sour note, but I guess this makes it more tragic. And let’s face it, the Master’s
not really dead. He/she never is. We’ll probably see a new incarnation pop up
in a few years.
And I love how the Twelfth Doctor’s regeneration starts. He
doesn’t want to change, much like the Tenth Doctor, but he’s actively, angrily
trying to force back a regeneration, holding it back so much until it actually
kills him. Even when he’s brought back so he can regenerate properly, he’s
still refusing to change. With Twelve, he either dies as himself, or he doesn’t
die at all.
So this means that, yes, the regeneration seen at the
beginning of last week’s episode was technically a fake-out. The end result of
the Doctor’s big “NO!” isn’t’ a regeneration, but it’s the start of one. But
the way it’s presented, it’s a far less infuriating fake-out than the one
earlier this season. At least with this one, we know that this will result in
the Doctor changing at some point very soon.
There’s a few problems that pop up in the ending, involving
some major deus ex machina stuff with the return of Heather. You guys remember
Heather, the girl from the first episode of this season that Bill had a crush
on, and then she got sucked into a puddle, turned into a spaceship, and stalked
Bill and the Doctor across time and space? Well after being gone for the whole season,
she shows back up at the end of the finale to turn Bill from a Cyberman into a
puddle-person like herself – somehow – to give Bill the ability to resurrect
the Doctor with her tears – somehow – and to take Bill on a journey across the
cosmos.
While I am happy that Bill’s final fate isn’t one of
tragedy, and I’m super grateful that Heather was able to come back to give
closure to her relationship with Bill, it does come completely out of nowhere.
Heather didn’t even have any appearances outside of the first episode, and
there was no foreshadowing throughout the season that she might return. And the
episode manages to muddle the rules of Heather’s powers even farther and make
it more confusing as to what she’s capable of. So apparently, the puddle-ship
can now rearrange molecules or whatever to pull Bill out of the Cyberman suit
and make her a Bill-Puddle, and apparently their tears can bring a Time Lord
back to life. Sure, why not? Also, it feels just a little too similar to Clara's final fate from last season, as both companions wind up living another life among the stars with someone who is not the Doctor.
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| 'Tis a flesh wound. |
Oh, and the First Doctor will be teaming up with the Twelfth
at Christmas. This was already heavily rumored, but it’s really cool that this
is true. The original actor for Doctor Number One, William Hartnell, died some
time ago, but his legacy is being continued by David Bradley (Filch from the Harry Potter movies), who previously
portrayed Hartnell in a docudrama about the series. Out of all the Doctors, I
believe the First is the best fit for a team-up with the Twelfth.
So, does “The Doctor Falls” live up to the hype set up by
“World Enough and Time”? In some ways, yes. But in many others, no. This
episode definitely feels like a final, desperate battle for the Twelfth Doctor,
and has a lot more action than anything seen in this season. You definitely get
the feeling that Moffat is clearing the slate for when Chris Chibnall takes
over as showrunner, with Missy’s death, Bill and Nardole going their separate ways,
and the Doctor being alone again close to regeneration. And the emotional moments in this episode –the Doctor’s
speech to the Masters, Bill’s discovery of what she’s become, the Doctor’s
final stand against the Cybermen, etc. – are all on point.
But there’s
potential wasted with the initial team-up with the Masters and even with the
Cybermen. Once the other versions of the Cybermen show up (an unnecessary
addition, in my opinion), the Mondassian Cybermen go from acting like the
cyber-zombies of the previous episode to acting like any other Cybermen shown
on the show. After how unique the Mondassian Cybermen were portrayed in the
previous episode, this is a real disappointment.
The main problem is probably the same one that plagued last
season’s ending two-parter. Much like “Heaven Sent”, “World Enough and Time” set
up standards that their following episodes – “Hell Bent” and “The Doctor
Falls”, respectively – just couldn’t follow through with. It’s not necessarily
entirely the episode’s fault; it’s just the unfortunate luck of following a
crowd-pleaser. However, I feel that “The Doctor Falls” was a much better
follow-up to “World Enough and Time” than “Hell Bent” was to “Heaven Sent”, but
that’s probably because of how big this episode feels due to being one of
Twelve’s final adventures.
But hey, kudos to the episode for actually having the Doctor falling.
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| Without hope, without witness, without reward. |
Final verdict: 8.5/10.
And so, Series 10 comes to a close. What did I think
overall?
Well, as I continually said through these reviews, Series 10
had a lot of great concepts. Spacesuits that require money to provide oxygen, an
alien invasion that requires consent, a spaceship where time moves differently
in different parts, and let’s not forget the episode featured almost entirely
in a simulation where everyone kills themselves. Some times these concepts
would work out, sometimes not so much. The Vault storyline was a big bugaboo here,
since it started off by sucking us in, but ended on a predictable anticlimax. But
nonetheless, this season definitely had some interesting concepts for episodes.
So, here’s what I thought were the Best Episode and Worst
Episode of the season.
Worst Episode:
“The Lie of the Land”
Not only did this episode provide an unsatisfying conclusion
to the already-uneven Monks Trilogy, not only did it waste potential with the
concepts provided to it, not only was it mostly unmemorable to me, but it had
an absolutely infuriating fake-out regeneration that made no sense. The Monks
Trilogy in itself was already very frustrating in how much it dipped in quality
– with the best episode being its first part, “Extremis” – but “The Lie of the
Land” was definitely the nail in the coffin and the low point of the season.
Best Episode:
“World Enough and Time”
I gushed enough about this episode last week, but here’s a
quick recap of all the things I liked: The slow buildup to the Cybermen. The
terrifying atmosphere of the monsters themselves. The sheer fact that the show
was able to finally make the Cybermen this scary again. The shock factor of Bill’s
death. Missy’s attempt at redemption. The glorious return of the John Simm
Master. The intriguing concept of time dilation due to the fact that while also
being a trippy time-related plot device, it is also a real scientific
phenomena. I don’t think I need to say anymore; “World Enough in Time” is a
great episode, and definitely the “Heaven Sent” of the season.
Ranking it among the Twelfth Doctor’s other seasons, it’s
better than Series 8, but not as good as Series 9. But then again, it’s hard to
top the sheer scope of Series 9 and its constant use of big, two-part episodes.
Plus, Series 9 is widely considered one of the show’s best seasons. The quality
of Series 10 wasn’t always consistent, but it was definitely better at
delivering good episodes than Series 8 was. And it introduced Bill, a great companion who started off a lot better than previous Moffat-created companion Clara Oswald. Whereas Clara started off as a "Mary Sue" character type, with a long-running mystery involving her importance, Bill started off as a working class girl whisked into adventure. I feel this is the best way to go with Doctor Who companions: have them start off as extremely ordinary, only for the Doctor's influence to turn them into something more.
Overall, for a final season for
Capaldi, I thought Series 10 was pretty solid.
I’ll be back to talk about Doctor Who again around Christmas, when the Twelfth Doctor
regenerates in a final adventure with the First Doctor, and Steven Moffat
leaves as showrunner. Be warned: tears will be shed then.
But make sure you stayed tuned to this blog for what TV show
I’ll be talking about next. Because in just a few weeks, winter is coming…
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