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| The Doctor fails to recognize an old friend... |
2 episodes: Dark Water, Death in Heaven. Approx. 107 minutes. Written by: Steven Moffat. Directed by: Rachel Talalay. Produced by: Peter Bennett.
THE PLOT
Clara calls Danny, determined to come clean about her continued travels with the Doctor. She begins by telling him that she loves him. She never gets any further. While they are talking, he steps off a curb onto a street and is killed. Alive one second, dead the next.
Clara announces that she not only deserves better, she's "owed." She calls the Doctor and hops into his TARDIS, pretending nothing is wrong. She wanders around the console room while chatting, picking out every one of his spare TARDIS keys, and then knocks him unconscious. When he wakes, she threatens him with the destruction of every key unless he agrees to go back and save Danny.
The Doctor goes one better, with an idea to save him that will not violate the laws of time. He will take use the traces of Clara's subconscious still within the console to follow Danny's trail - materializing the TARDIS in the Afterlife.
Whatever they expect, they end up finding something very different. They materialize in a corridor of "The 3W Facility," in which the bodies of the dead are suspended in water that reveals only their organic tissue - Their skeletons. Dr. Chang (Andrew Leung), a scientist at 3W, reveals that the skeletons are actually in a metal casing, which cannot be seen through the water - News which makes the Doctor wary.
With good reason. By coming to 3W, he has sprung a trap set by "Missy" (Michelle Gomez), an old enemy in a new form. The dead have been converted to Cybermen - And Missy plans to set them loose on Earth, gloating that the human race's greatest weakness is that "the dead outnumber the living!"
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: "Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?" The Doctor brushes aside Clara's attempted betrayal as if was nothing - In fact, he seems far less affected by it than he was by her chewing him out! Though pulling Danny out of the Underworld is the actual goal here, he still warns Clara to "be skeptical and critical... even if it breaks your heart." The end sees him fully ready to kill in cold blood, a decision that's taken from him by an unexpected intervention.
Clara: If you have ever let this creature live, everything that happened today is on you. All of it, on you!" Clara's determination to force the Doctor to save Danny is convincing enough to be almost frightening, and her horror when she believes anger has pushed her into destroying the last TARDIS key is wonderfully played. You can read the line, "What have I done?" flying silently and desperately across her face. Also good is her pain as she listens to Danny's voice on the phone and forces herself to question him, her despair growing as he can't give answers. Part Two loses track of Clara for too much of its running time, but her anger at what's been done to Danny fuels much of the climax.
Danny: Is dead. And, I'm sad to say, I'm rather glad. I noted in my review of The Caretaker that Danny too often was coming across as Rory 2.0... and he's been nothing more than that ever since. Anderson has done a creditable job with the thin material he's been given, and it's nice that Moffat does remember to tie up Danny's "very bad day." But that, and a last jibe about the Doctor keeping his hands clean by having Clara be the one to end matters, aren't enough to make me sorry about losing him. The character had potential and the actor was good - But the series lost interest in him about half a season ago. In the end, Danny Pink represents a rare failure in a mostly excellent season.
Kate Lethbridge-Stewart: Jemma Redgrave returns, and is as welcome a presence as she was in her appearances last season. I particularly enjoyed her exchanges with the Doctor about Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. When the Doctor criticizes her strongarm tactics by invoking her father, she tells him flatly that they both know full well that he would have done the same. A rare quiet moment sees them looking at the Brigadier's portrait, her musing that he always wanted the Doctor to salute him and him replying that all he ever truly had to do was ask.
"Missy": Michelle Gomez's season villain, glimpsed in multiple episodes, finally gets her big moment, complete with a big cliffhanger reveal as to her true identity. The reveal works, as does Gomez's performance. As with most of the series' major players, she shows strong chemistry with Capaldi, and their interplay is a highlight of the story. A good feature is that neither Capaldi nor Gomez play their confrontations as enemies. These are two friends who took very different paths and have very different values, but who do at heart miss and even like each other. Since a return of this villain has already been confirmed, I hope more is done with this specific character beat.
Cybermen: Basically just plot devices. This isn't a Cyber-story, they're just the mechanism through which Missy intends to achieve her goal. The conversion of the dead into Cybermen is less effective than seeing living humans turned into these creatures, because there's no horror of watching an individual be transformed - particularly when two of the individuals in question are allowed to retain their identities and core values. I would actually have preferred it if these were simply a generic robot army (since that's basically what the Cybermen are reduced to here) - but then we wouldn't be able to end Part One with a visual nod to The Invasion, as the Cybermen march once again outside St. Paul's Cathedral.
THOUGHTS
After two years of only single-part episodes, seeing a two-parter with a proper cliffhanger is extremely welcome. Steven Moffat has already confirmed more two-parters for Series Nine, so it seems that the experiment of making all stories one episode has finally been declared over. The cliffhanger is a good one, too: Cybermen in London, Clara in imminent danger, and the reveal of Missy's identity... Very hard not to push on straight to Part Two from there!
As is often the case, Part One is the stronger episode. It is tightly-paced, with new twists and revelations coming throughout. There are several effective moments, from Danny's death to Clara's betrayal to her phone conversation with Danny to the revelation of the Cybermen and Missy... Really, the whole hour is an extended string of terrific scenes, all of them focused and unified.
Part Two loses a lot of that focus. Once Kate and UNIT are introduced, the narrative all but loses track of Clara until the last twenty minutes. The UNIT scenes also do very little to advance the story. If Missy simply took the Doctor prisoner and escorted him to the graveyard, the plot would make every bit as much sense and be a lot more focused. All that would be lost would be some fan-pleasing cameos, an unexpected character death, and an action scene - none of which are actually important to the plot.
Lest this start sounding negative, I should say that I enjoyed the whole thing. The first episode is terrific. The second episode loses focus, but remains fun even if most of the middle isn't actually necessary to the story. Most of the character scenes work, the "big" scenes are as effective as they're meant to be, and the two hour running time passes quickly.
PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE
The two scenes bookending the story are among the best writing Steven Moffat has ever done. Danny's death is stunningly well-done. There are no emotional histrionics, no swelling music or slow motion. We're just watching two characters having a phone conversation, followed by silence - Silence which lasts just long enough for us to know something's wrong before a kind woman's awkward voice tells Clara there's been an accident. It hits because it's the way such a moment plays out in reality. One moment someone is alive, one moment they're dead, and on a phone call you never even know how much was heard before that final second.
The epilogue is equally good, a perfect bow tied around all the deceptions and lies between the Doctor and Clara all season long. The Doctor is so convinced that he's found a way to return Danny to Clara that he lies to her about his own state so that he can nobly get out of her way. Clara is so convinced the Doctor is ready to move on with his life, she lies that Danny is back so that she can nobly get out of his way. These are two badly-damaged people who desperately need each other... But they can't stop lying long enough to recognize that they are both in equal amounts of emotional turmoil.
What comes between these bookends is slightly overbusy and unfocused, true... But those two scenes are flatly excellent, and the rest is never less than entertaining. The two-parter as a whole does not rank among the season's highlights in my opinion... But it does have several excellent moments, and even with its faults it remains a more than respectable close to the best Doctor Who season since Series Five.
Overall Rating: 7/10.
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