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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

200 Comments

  1. Bennett
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:44 am

    I haven't double-checked, and it might just be wishful thinking, but I think that the visual effect was the same as the one used earlier when Missy teleported herself inside the Matrix slice – and not the effect that rendered Osgood into a pile of ash and broken glasses. Supervillains always have a trapdoor.

    Reply

  2. Daibhid C
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:47 am

    It certainly looked closer to that than the previous vaporisation effect, but then it wasn't her vaporiser that did it; it was Cyber-Brig's gun.

    Which crushed my hope that however the Mistress was going to come back, it would give Osgood a chance to return as well.

    Reply

  3. Bennett
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:53 am

    ..it was Cyber-Brig's gun.

    Ah, so that's why I should resist the temptation to share my limp thoughts. In case I miss something kind of important. I think a rewatch is in order.

    Reply

  4. Triturus
    November 8, 2014 @ 12:13 pm

    Not quite as good as last week's set up but still pretty damn good. Some powerful scenes, as we've come to expect from this series.

    Michelle Gomez was fantastic. Gutwrenching stuff with Danny in the cybersuit.

    And "Permission to SQUEEEE!" ZAP! Poor old Seb. Biggest laugh of the series for me.

    Reply

  5. Josh04
    November 8, 2014 @ 12:18 pm

    Well, ethics still in question, that was some impressive body acting of "what have I become?"

    Reply

  6. Francis
    November 8, 2014 @ 12:49 pm

    I enjoyed it up to the unearned deus ex machina (the one involving the original series character). That just threw me out of the story.

    Reply

  7. David Anderson
    November 8, 2014 @ 1:00 pm

    I don't know about unearned, but there was no way a line like 'my dad always wanted to get you to salute him' was not going to be paid off.

    Reply

  8. Lewis Christian
    November 8, 2014 @ 1:00 pm

    Plus they threw Gallifrey in with the planets at the end of the sequence. (The director told us to watch for the planets, just in case anyone reckons I'm seeing something that isn't there. It is, it's just very quick and subtle.)

    Reply

  9. Nathan
    November 8, 2014 @ 1:35 pm

    In a way, this is the narrative collapse that you get for the cliffhanger of the 12th episode in previous seasons, and I still hold out hopes for a happy ending for the 13th episode at Christmas. After all, Santa comes in from outside the narrative, stops the closing credits, critiques the downbeat ending, and then takes the Doctor off to fix it somehow. Could Danny and Clara finally get together at Christmas? Please?

    Reply

  10. orfeo
    November 8, 2014 @ 1:40 pm

    I don't know yet quite what I thought of that overall. I do know, though, that it was as ambitious as hell.

    Reply

  11. David Anderson
    November 8, 2014 @ 1:57 pm

    I would put Survival (and perhaps Logopolis) up there with it as Master stories. Although Survival isn't a straight Master story.
    I don't really see what the competition is for best ever cyberman story. (I admire Invasion, but this makes better use of the cybermen, and it has the benefits of forty-five years of storytelling technique.)

    I agree about Osgood. I was thinking earlier that the Moffat doesn't really fridge potential companions in the way that the Davies-era does, and I'm sorry this was an exception.

    Reply

  12. ScarvesandCelery
    November 8, 2014 @ 1:59 pm

    I think I mostly agree with Phil's review – I loved loved loved Missy, and the Doctor and Clara's goodbye was particularly affecting. But it did leave a slight sour taste in the mouth with the endless stream of death, although Danny's sacrifice was incredibly affecting – I think it mostly just felt unexpected because, well, it's a Moffat episode, and I don't expect death (on this scale) in those.* Osgood's death, however, while chilling and a brilliant moment for Missy, felt cruel and cynical in a way that was not worth the benefit of making Missy scarier. Take that out, and you probably have an episode I love, but I'll need a rewatch to think it through.

    *Not that death isn't adressed in his episodes, but usually it's as a major theme ("Name of the Doctor") or it comes with deaths that are softened ("The Angels Take Manhattan"/ "Silence in the Library"). This may be Moffat's first high body count, multiple major deaths story.

    Reply

  13. Francis
    November 8, 2014 @ 2:02 pm

    Oh, of course it was going to be paid off. But it was still unearned and undercut the themes present in the rest of the episode.

    Reply

  14. elvwood
    November 8, 2014 @ 2:11 pm

    Oh my giddy aunt – of course. I forget to tie these into the moment, even when it's become obvious how deliberate those links are in the Moffat era.

    Remembrance Sunday, and we have the dead repurposed as weapons of war. An action which is rejected not just by the Doctor, but by a dead soldier. Colour me impressed, and definitely anticipating some flak flying in Moffat's direction…

    Reply

  15. Dan
    November 8, 2014 @ 2:32 pm

    I thought it was incredible. Reading this review reminded me of one thing however – it appears that Doctor Who has just brought people, literally, back from the dead – not just used the idea, actually gone and done it. It's not just uploading the someone's consciousness somewhere at the point of death (like River, Danny, the Afghan kid etc. – possible in theory to retrieve and somehow tie back to their recently deceased bodies in the last two cases – although that isn't what seems to have happened in the last case) but, in the case of the Brigadier, apparently bringing the actual him back after some considerable time dead. This takes Doctor Who into a realm that has always been bounded before, and probably without sufficient justification.

    I gave it 10 out of 10 regardless.

    Reply

  16. Scurra
    November 8, 2014 @ 2:39 pm

    I said to a friend that this is the first ever season of, well, practically anything – let alone Doctor Who – that could actually end with "and then she woke up and it was all a dream", and it wouldn't feel like a cheat of any kind…

    Reply

  17. ScarvesandCelery
    November 8, 2014 @ 2:41 pm

    Okay, Rankings:

    Listen
    Kill the Moon
    Dark Water/ Death in Heaven
    The Caretaker
    Deep Breath
    Mummy on the Orient Express
    In the Forest of the Night
    Flatline
    Into the Dalek
    Time Heist
    Robot of Sherwood

    Reply

  18. elvwood
    November 8, 2014 @ 2:58 pm

    Don't forget Missy travelled in time collecting "souls" – no reason she couldn't have picked up the Brig's as easily as Danny's. The recorporation of the boy is another matter, of course.

    I agree, by the way, that the little unexplained details like this don't spoil it…

    Reply

  19. Iain Coleman
    November 8, 2014 @ 3:08 pm

    Given all the stuff about soldiers in this episode,it's noteworthy that it was followed on BBC1 by the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance, a lengthy pageant of military pomp broadcast from the Albert Hall and hosted by Doctor Who veteran Huw Edwards.

    Reply

  20. Triturus
    November 8, 2014 @ 3:23 pm

    Given that there's been a lot of discussion about metatext on this blog recently, I wonder how long it will take for somone on the internet to take umbrage at killing off Osgood as an example of Moffat taking potshots at fandom? She was pretty obviously a stand-in for the fans in DOTD, after all. And cutting down Seb in the middle of a massive 'squee' could also be interpreted in the same light.

    Reply

  21. Melissa Robertson
    November 8, 2014 @ 3:39 pm

    Phenomenal, of course. Absolutely amazing.

    I particularly enjoyed the whole "I'm not a good man or a bad man" bit. Because ultimately, it doesn't really matter. Sure, the Doctor's made some mistakes. Sure, he's sometimes arrogant and insensitive, and sometimes he makes morally questionable choices. But he's still that man in the blue box who flits around the universe helping people. And that's what really matters.

    I also loved Danny's speech about soldiers. Because their job really is to protect. That's why we have armies. And really, soldiers aren't all that different from the Doctor. They both protect people, and they both make mistakes.

    Also, when Santa asked the Doctor what he wants for Christmas, all I could think of was Gallifrey. Although I kind of doubt they would do anything that big on Christmas. Than again, Time of the Doctor was a Christmas special.

    Reply

  22. Marionette
    November 8, 2014 @ 3:48 pm

    It gets my vote as best Moffat climax, if only for the virtue of having a coherent plot that largely made sense. I mean there were plenty of fridge logic moments like why were the Cybermen stored in x-ray water and what did the Cybermen use to build their bodies (even if every drop contained the blueprint for an entire Cybermen it takes more than a blueprint to construct a machine), or the lack of explanation about how Missy came to be in charge of a cyber-army, or pretty much anything else, really.

    So better than Big Bang Two, but not as good as Doomsday for me. But then I like finding out how the villain escaped from certain death last time. Hand waving it away or ignoring it completely always feels like a cheat.

    Reply

  23. Ciaran M
    November 8, 2014 @ 4:02 pm

    Goodness me, that was messy.

    Missy was good.

    The rest of it… sure did exist.

    What a letdown. Oh well.

    Reply

  24. Ciaran M
    November 8, 2014 @ 4:03 pm

    "We're making you president of the world!"
    "What's the significance of that?"
    "Yes."

    Reply

  25. Ciaran M
    November 8, 2014 @ 4:09 pm

    Though I prefer the Master desperately seeking validation from the Doctor as seen in Sound of Drums/The Last of the Time Lords, to explicitly jokery Master.

    Also, there were some sweet 8th Doctor comic homages, from the Cybermen making it rain, to feeling pain being linked to empathy, to the Master trying to prove the Doctor is just like them.

    Reply

  26. Bennett
    November 8, 2014 @ 4:16 pm

    That looks like fun. Let me give it a go.

    Listen
    Dark Water / Death in Heaven
    Deep Breath
    Mummy on the Orient Express
    Flatline
    Into the Dalek
    In the Forest of the Night
    The Caretaker
    Robot of Sherwood
    Kill the Moon
    Time Heist

    …actually, that wasn't as much fun as I thought. And I'm pretty sure I got a few wrong.

    Reply

  27. heroesandrivals
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:17 pm

    implying that Handles WASN'T the Brigadeer

    Reply

  28. Doctor Memory
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:21 pm

    (a) Michelle Gomez as the Master forever, okay? First time I've stopped missing Derek Jacobi, nevermind Roger Delgado.

    (b) Somewhere in California, the Cyberman Steve Jobs was seriously peeved about the design of his suit. "Okay, at least it's brushed metal, but look at all of these… flanges. Can we lose those?"

    (c) I realize it kinda wasn't the point, but, um, Moffat went out of his way to hang a lampshade on the fact that (1) there was a slice of the Matrix stuck to the roof of St. Pauls, and (2) that Missy's TARDIS had to be sitting around somewhere nearby. You'd think they'd rate a mention?

    (d) It took me a few seconds to realize that the photo on the plane was Nicholas Courtney and not Saddam Hussein. And I kept doing double-takes. They couldn't have found a better photo?

    (e) It's nice that Clara got to have her moment of emotional clarity with the Doctor, but just how was she planning on getting a resurrected pre-teen with severe PTSD back to his parents in fucking Afghanistan without using the TARDIS?

    Reply

  29. mimhoff
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:27 pm

    "[London,] New York, Paris, Rome, Marrakesh, Brisbane, Glasgow"

    Reply

  30. heroesandrivals
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:28 pm

    Missy NEVER referenced the events of The End of Time, so I'm operating under the assumption that she was never the Sims master, but a copy of the Master reconstituted out of the copy of his consciousness within the Matrix. (After all, thew Time Lords wanted the Master to serve as their soldier and he ran, very early in the war. …so they made their own!)
    This lets Moffat do "The Two Masters" next year.

    BTW, you realize that Moffat has now created THREE love-interests for the Doctor who are affiliated with giant computers containing virtualized souls?
    – River Song and the Library
    – Tasha Lem and the Papal Mainframe
    – The Master and the Nethersphere Matrix.

    I'm not sure what to make of that, other than it being a writing tic.
    I mean — I was sure that having TWO giant solar flares this season, explicitly mentioning the parallel — was going to be an arc-plot. Or the fact the Sky Burned only 4 episodes ago during the resolution of the Forest of the Night. But these all seem to be just unintentional cases of the show repeating itself within a single season.
    (I blame poor oversight, but I'm not particularly upset over it.)

    Reply

  31. Doctor Memory
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:28 pm

    If it makes you feel any better, the episode ended with the status quo ante bellum still very firmly in place with regard to "death". If a human being dies, their final mind-state is copied into a large disco ball stuck to the roof of St. Paul's Cathedral on Ludgate Hill in the City of London, inside of which they will be condescended to by a series of administrative AIs until someone either empties it out again or the heat death of the universe presumably.

    Reply

  32. William Silvia
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:29 pm

    I really need to rewatch this episode, because this episode is me watching it as a fan in the way Doomsday was just me watching it as a fan. Interestingly, the only thing that I found to be a flaw in the episode (not subjective "I think Kate should have died instead of Osgood because Osgood is a more interesting character" flaws, mind) was not mentioned by anybody whose comments I read: A portal from the afterlife to the world of the living, powered by tech from the species of someone who declared the afterlife to be a sham the prior episode…or even if you just ignore that line, in or out of context, that whole thing seemed a bit out of place with everything to me.

    Reply

  33. TheSmilingStallionInn
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:30 pm

    I stayed. I continued watching because I wanted it to be different. Maybe Christmas really will make it different. I don't know. Really, really depressing episode. I know that is the point of this episode, considering all of the horrible things that have happened that nothing can make right, but still…sigh. I want it to be different. This is like–I had seen the teaser trailer for the Christmas special a couple of hours ago, before seeing the episode itself, and I thought that was exciting.

    Father Christmas shows up and there are Alien aliens, or Thing aliens, but here I'm wondering…dang. Father Christmas, of course, is not real, but I bet there are a ton of kids right now wishing that he was real. It's like Hogfather, is it not? How can you believe in love or justice if they are immaterial things that do not exist? That's like believing in Santa Clause/Father Christmas…but right now, I'm not entirely certain about this episode, personally.

    Reply

  34. William Silvia
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:30 pm

    Prior to this episode airing, my group was speculating that Handles was Danny.

    Reply

  35. William Silvia
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:32 pm

    Moffat explicitly wrote the Doctor making derogatory comments about the fandom stand-in group in 2007. It's not like anything he does can make he seems like he detests the fans any more than that.

    Reply

  36. TheSmilingStallionInn
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:33 pm

    Could also be digital effects shot, saving money. Cloud burning like the sky burning…

    Reply

  37. William Silvia
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:34 pm

    They did mention that for essentially all of human history, Missy has been collecting consciousnesses, so there's no reason why Lethbridge-Stewart wouldn't be just like every other human.

    Reply

  38. TheSmilingStallionInn
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:36 pm

    I had wished it was a dream, I kept waiting for it to turn out like a dream at the end of this episode…dang it.

    Reply

  39. William Silvia
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:37 pm

    Dark Water – Death in Heaven
    Time Heist
    Flatline
    Mummy on the Orient Express
    Robot of Sherwood
    In the Forest of the Night
    Into the Dalek
    Deep Breath
    The Caretaker
    Listen
    Kill the Moon

    Reply

  40. William Silvia
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:40 pm

    I don't know about unearned or deus ex machina. It was hinted at multiple times in this story (they couldn't stop talking about Alistair) and either way the story would have ended with Missy being shot by a weapon that she had a hand in engineering.

    Reply

  41. William Silvia
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:41 pm

    That would be because the story opened with Clara claiming to be the Doctor.

    Reply

  42. reservoirdogs
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:42 pm

    Ok, best cliffhanger of anything ever. Yes, even better than Best of Both Worlds, All Star Superman, and Tenth Planet part 4. Santa Claus on the TARDIS, that is just amazing. And he's aware of the fourth wall. In a bit where they blatantly rip off His Last Vow.

    Reply

  43. Doctor Memory
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:50 pm

    As someone who was also flogging the "maybe Missy is a regeneration of the Delgado/Pratt/Ainley Master, not the Jacobi/Simm Master" line in various other places this last week, I salute your intelligence and good taste, but think you're a little off:

    Simm pretty clearly says in "The Sound of Drums" that he was the version resurrected by the Time Lords (presumably from the Matrix records of the Pratt Master), and while Missy doesn't specifically reference any of the exact events of "The End of Time", she did confirm that she escaped Gallifrey after the Doctor(s) saved it in "The Time of the Doctor", which (sadly) suggests that she is in fact a regeneration of the Jacobi/Simm line, since Simm was presumably still trapped in the center of the Time War when Gallifrey was vanished.

    (For the sake of sanity, we're all going to agree that the Eric Roberts Master just… never happened.)

    Reply

  44. Owlie
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:50 pm

    ''it’s about the Doctor’s version of the Joker.''

    This is EXACTLY what I was hoping for since Dark Water aired.

    That callback to the Doctor's Wife at the end was just chilling [where he realizes Missy tricked him and he's not getting his Time Lord friends back].

    Reply

  45. TheSmilingStallionInn
    November 8, 2014 @ 5:57 pm

    Here is my ranking. And now I'm wondering a lot about Listen–Orson Pink, what was on the other side of the door that the Doctor saw, and what was under 'Rupert's' red cover? Are we ever going to get any answer there? And how can Orson Pink exist, unless Clara turns out to be pregnant or Danny comes back?

    Listen
    Mummy on the Orient Express
    Flatline
    Dark Water/Death in Heaven
    Kill the Moon
    The Caretaker
    Robot of Sherwood
    Deep Breath
    In the Forest of the Night
    Into the Dalek
    Time Heist

    Reply

  46. Doctor Memory
    November 8, 2014 @ 6:02 pm

    Mummy on the Orient Express
    (and I still think it's very weird that so few people think that)
    Listen
    Flatline
    Dark Water/ Death in Heaven
    Deep Breath
    In the Forest of the Night
    The Caretaker
    Robot of Sherwood
    Time Heist
    Into the Dalek
    Kill the Moon

    That said, with the exception of the inexcusably bad "Kill the Moon", this was (a) easily the best season since the Eccleston one, and (b) hopefully a sign that Jamie Mathieson is on tap as the next show-runner, not Gatiss or (god help us) Chibnall.

    Reply

  47. jane
    November 8, 2014 @ 6:12 pm

    Put me on the Listen train.

    Listen
    Deep Breath
    Kill The Moon — tie — DW/DIH
    The Caretaker
    In The Forest of the Night
    Robots of Sherwood
    Flatline
    Orient Express
    Into The Dalek
    Time Heist

    Reply

  48. jane
    November 8, 2014 @ 6:14 pm

    Death is a gift. I was wondering where the audience implication was in this episode — thank you!

    Reply

  49. unnoun
    November 8, 2014 @ 6:51 pm

    On the other hand, the Master's kind of a villain.

    Reply

  50. unnoun
    November 8, 2014 @ 6:52 pm

    …Was that in Blink or Time Crash? Because in the former, the fans kind of save the day, and in the latter, it ends in a sequence that's basically pure geeking out.

    Reply

  51. unnoun
    November 8, 2014 @ 6:52 pm

    Also, what Jane said.

    Reply

  52. John
    November 8, 2014 @ 6:54 pm

    It's not the Afterlife. It's Gallifreyan Matrix technology, as seen before in Deadly Assassin and Trial of a Time Lord. It's just Danny's consciousness in a very advanced computer, not an afterlife.

    I'm not sure how Danny was able to send the kid back from it, mind you. But the Nethersphere was very clearly not the afterlife.

    Reply

  53. unnoun
    November 8, 2014 @ 6:57 pm

    I think the main reason the Doctor assumed the afterlife was a sham was the bit about how it was psychic stuff from the body and "don't cremate me". He seemed open to the concept until that point.

    Reply

  54. unnoun
    November 8, 2014 @ 6:59 pm

    But no, seriously, I don't get how villainous characters doing villainous things is read as a representation of the views of the author? I mean, what?

    Reply

  55. unnoun
    November 8, 2014 @ 7:05 pm

    I mean, I also like the idea of "The Two Masters" but it's not like being the same individual has stopped the various Doctors from meeting themselves. So, why? What's wrong with Missy being the same Master as any of the others? I felt she's probably the best since Delgado. Maybe the best period.

    Reply

  56. Nick Petrillo
    November 8, 2014 @ 7:16 pm

    To be fair, the scene with Clara and her gran in Dark Water also passes the Bechdel test, if I remember properly.

    Osgood's death still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that really overshadows all I love though, which is a shame. She had serious character potential, though I do love your Zygon-clone idea.

    Reply

  57. Jesse
    November 8, 2014 @ 7:22 pm

    The Mary Poppins/Twilight Zone/Plan 9 mashup we were all waiting for.

    Reply

  58. Alan
    November 8, 2014 @ 7:37 pm

    Ha! A friend who watched with me actually said "Oh my God! Doctor Who is doing Plan 9!"

    Reply

  59. heroesandrivals
    November 8, 2014 @ 7:39 pm

    I want Missy to have a goatee when she comes back. 😉
    I am completely serious about this.

    Reply

  60. Alan
    November 8, 2014 @ 7:47 pm

    I am looking forward to Zygon-Osgood and hope that actually becomes a thing. After all, Moffatt brought both Strax and Dorium Maldovar back from what appeared to be certain death once they became clear fan favorites. To be honest, I am strangely ambivalent about Osgood's death. On one hand, her death did feel somewhat gratuitous and uncomfortably like fridging. On the other, I actively dislike her being a parody of a Doctor Who Fangirl (I disliked Malcolm from "Planet of the Dead" for the same reason, though it didn't help that Lee Evans grates on my like nobody's business.)

    Reply

  61. Alan
    November 8, 2014 @ 7:50 pm

    I meant to add that personally, I was more annoyed with the death of the UNIT officer played by Sanjeev Bhaskar, because I was a big fan of The Kumars and had hoped he might be playing a recurring character.

    Reply

  62. HarlequiNQB
    November 8, 2014 @ 8:15 pm

    I feel bad for saying this, since there's clearly so much adoration for it (and like every episode this series I've never seen opinion so divided), but I despised it. Honestly, almost everything about it I found to be ever so slightly rancid.

    The direction was off, the editing was poor, the pacing was dire, the effects put the classic series in a good light at several points, the sound mix was so bad I missed big chunks of dialogue, and I'm not sure about the script because everything else threw it into such a bad light (actually, what was going on with the light, why was it cloud obscured daytime in the graveyard, but not in the plane that was above the clouds? They hadn't gone that far. There was some acting, I definitely noticed that.

    On the list of the season I put it dead last, and for the series as a whole? Well, it might be slightly higher than Fear Her. Execrable.

    That said, I'm really happy a lot of you liked it, I only wish I could have seen it as you did.

    Reply

  63. Dustin
    November 8, 2014 @ 8:44 pm

    "[H]ow was she planning on getting a resurrected pre-teen with severe PTSD back to his parents in fucking Afghanistan without using the TARDIS?"

    Given London's HUGE South Asian community, probably with the help of a translator and, eventually, an airplane ticket.

    Reply

  64. Dustin
    November 8, 2014 @ 8:53 pm

    Not every female character death is a fridging. Unless you want female characters to be functionally immortal, some will die, if you're telling the kind of story in which people die, which Doctor Who has always been.

    And great characters like Osgood should be able to just be without someone looking for an excuse to find an offense. She's not an insulting fan-stereotype. She's presented as a brave and competent scientist. The scarf and the bowtie? Just cosplay in-jokes, no mockery implied.

    Reply

  65. Dustin
    November 8, 2014 @ 9:01 pm

    "I've never seen opinion so divided"

    Tell me about it. Fandom has cracked open wider than ever (at least since the show came back. I know so little about before.) People seem primed to do little but rhapsodize or berate.

    I watch this on the IPlayer and have no idea what poor sound mixing people are talking about. I've been catching every word. And to say that the effects were worse than green bubble wrap is to be deliberately hyperbolic.

    Reply

  66. HarlequiNQB
    November 8, 2014 @ 9:38 pm

    Mmmm. Bubblewrap was the height of clever use of materials on a budget back in the day, but fair point. It would not be hyperbole to say I could do better than many of the digital effects in this episode though (in all fairness the makeup effects were very good; the BBC has always managed exceptional make up on a budget, even if it was just bubblewrap in hindsight), because I know I can. Whether I could do them better on a BBC budget and schedule is another matter – but either they couldn't afford to do it right due to the sheer number of effects required, or they didn't have time, because these were truly terrible compared to everything else this season (especially so compared to the excellent work in Flatline, and even last episode), and close to the bottom of any episode since 2005.

    It's odd I have such an overriding distaste for this episode (my wife did too), every other episode this season I've loved or at least solidly liked. The weakest episodes for me would be in the top three of most seasons, except this one. Curious as to why there's such a split in opinions across the board this year, and how vehement that split is – it's very odd.

    All that said, I'll still watch it again at some point (likely when the series hits Netflix, though I might buy it before that), and maybe the sound mixing will turn out better without nasty DVR compression messing things about (this has often, but not always been the case), and maybe I'll enjoy it more as a result (also sometimes the case), but I doubt this is ever going to shift far off my bottom 10 list as long as I continue to watch the show (and may that be for a long time to come).

    Reply

  67. Rebecca
    November 8, 2014 @ 9:48 pm

    But Osgood was very clever – cleverer than the Doctor expected – she helped him, and he wanted to travel with her. I don't think you can possibly read this as "Moffat hates the fans and wants them to die."

    Reply

  68. Rebecca
    November 8, 2014 @ 9:52 pm

    I was also not enthused about Osgood's death, but I don't think calling it fridging is fair or accurate. Fridging isn't just any death of a female character. It means she's killed off as a plot device to motivate the hero, surely. You think the Doctor wouldn't have fought the Master if she hadn't killed Osgood?

    Reply

  69. BerserkRL
    November 8, 2014 @ 10:29 pm

    I loved the way she emphasised Glasgow when looking at Capaldi.

    Reply

  70. BerserkRL
    November 8, 2014 @ 10:34 pm

    I loved the episode. But re sound mixing, I indeed couldn't hear what Missy was saying when the plane was getting ready to crash.

    Reply

  71. Dustin
    November 8, 2014 @ 10:38 pm

    It really depends on what your baseline is for judging the show's effects. It would certainly be unfair to weigh it against a massive-budget American thing like Game of Thrones, and even that show has had some dodgy CGI, because that's just what happens with CGI. It seems to take the enormous processing power available only on a film budget to make this stuff look realistic.

    Now, I distinctly remember the poor digital effects work from the Davies years. Nothing here was remotely as bad as the gooey Nestene pool in "Rose," the monsterized Dr. Lazarus or the fucking Adipose ("Partners in Crime" is my "Fear Her.") However, those last two examples would have been fine if the stories that contained them were any good, because I've always been eager to forgive a poor effects budget if everything else is clicking. It's really one of the last things I care about. I forgave green bubble wrap because "Ark in Space" was a fantastic, well-acted story, and, since I loved this one, I don't care how silly the flying Cybermen looked.

    I agree that the effects work in "Flatline," especially the fabulously weird shambling things, worked brilliantly. Might be the show's technological peak.

    Reply

  72. BerserkRL
    November 8, 2014 @ 10:39 pm

    The funeral home was named after Dodo Chaplet.

    Reply

  73. Steven
    November 8, 2014 @ 10:46 pm

    Intentionally or not I thought the episode marked Remembrance really beautifully.

    That is, a focus on redemption – in so many ways it was gung-ho and the closest Doctor Who's been to an action movie in a while (with tropes like a take on Air Force One, and a moment that was like Doctor Who-as-Bond-Movie) and yet the overriding message was one of peace. I thought it was wonderful that the more the show appropriated the stylistic tics of a blockbuster the more diametrically opposed the central message became to most action pictures.

    This won't mean much outside the UK but I think that the official Remembrance celebrations this year have been extremely problematic, more so than usual, and left me feeling really queasy. Doctor Who served a really distinct, valuable function today, one I'll remember for a very long time.

    Reply

  74. Dustin
    November 8, 2014 @ 10:59 pm

    Now, for my own comment and not in reply to anyone else, even though I got around to watching the episode late when everyone here seems to have gone to bed (and why wouldn't they have; it's almost 1AM here, and therefore later elsewhere):

    I was genuinely surprised and disappointed at Clara's farewell. I ignored the speculation about Coleman's departure, figuring it was just further baseless rumor-mongering of the kind that always pops up at the beginning of a new season. Coleman made huge progress this year in building her character on-the-fly, and her turns in "Kill the Moon," "Flatline" and "Death in Heaven" are now among my favorite performances from this show. I suddenly have a hard time remembering Karen Gillan getting show-stealing scenes like these (off the top of my head, maybe "Girl Who Waited" and "Angels Take Manhattan.")

    Given the kind of the stories this show has tried to tell since returning to air, and given its welcome emphasis (and often centralizing) of the companion's emotional journey, I really don't think an actor is well-served by only getting a single year. Just tor thirteen episodes did Coleman get to play an actual character and not a mystery, a trail of crumbs for the Doctor to follow. She could've been Twelve's Amy, his Rose, his Sarah Jane. She's as great an actor as Gillan (who got three years to make the role her own) and immeasurably superior to Piper, Agyeman, Tate and Darvill. I'll miss her tremendously.

    Reply

  75. BerserkRL
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:05 pm

    it’s got the first companion departure to top Doomsday

    But is it a companion departure? About 13 seconds into the Christmas trailer, that looks like Clara in the white dress just to the Doctor's right.

    Reply

  76. Dustin
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:07 pm

    Wonderful comments. The observance in the US has been transformed into a commemoration of veterans in general, and World War I does not seem to have had any lasting cultural significance here (it seems, in fact, almost completely forgotten), unlike the second one, though that may only be because I'm not old enough to remember WWI being even as few as 50 years distant, and there are still quite a few WW2 vets alive. Is the UK observance specific to the memory of the Great War, or has it been diluted somewhat? I'm sorry, but all I really know about what your country does is that people wear paper poppies.

    Reply

  77. Steven
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:12 pm

    I might be wrong but I really remember hearing that Jenna had a contract for, at least, Christmas? So she may be back.

    I'm a bit torn because I think she's great but the pay-off worked for me and I thought that the cafe scene and the hug line was an absolutely perfect way to end her arc – a return might deflate that.

    Though, if she does return she'll have to be pregnant right? If Danny stays dead (not a given but again I'd have concerns that a comeback would deflate the choice he makes with the boy, which was wonderful and sad) Clara would have to be pregnant to make the Orson thing work right? Or Danny has a twin. Maybe there's something I'm missing, or I'm being over-literal.

    I had actually expected it to be revealed last night that the call she was making to Danny was to tell him he was going to be a dad. Almost thought it was given.

    I remember Rose Leslie's name being (entirely baselessly am sure) banded around as a replacement. I think she'd be great with Capaldi. Complimentary voices. Won't be happy until every character, no matter how minor, is a Scot.

    Reply

  78. Dustin
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:21 pm

    Dark Water/Death in Heaven (as a single story, it sits here on the strength of part 2; part 1 alone would be lower on the list)
    Listen
    Flatline
    Mummy

    Everything else in a tie for fifth except for:
    In the Forest of the Night (second-to-last)
    Robot of Sherwood (the worst episode since "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe")

    Reply

  79. mimhoff
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:25 pm

    Clara: "Change the future! Run away from Trenzalore!"
    Doctor: "No, you saw my grave. It's my destiny to die here."
    (the Doctor survives through Time Lord intervention)

    Clara: "The moon can't disappear, we've seen it in the future!"
    Doctor: "Anything can happen at this point!"
    (everything turns out fine with a new moon)

    Clara: "The human race can't be killed by a solar flare. We're still around in the future. Like in the moon episode!"
    Doctor: "No! Time can be rewritten!"
    (everything turns out fine again)

    Sorry Orson, but they can't keep doing this without giving us a timeline change with consequences…

    Reply

  80. Dustin
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:28 pm

    I didn't know that Michelle Gomez was a Scot! She couldn't seem to decide an accent tonight. But more Scots, yes. Not being British, and existing at a significant cultural remove, I find Scottish accents devastatingly sexy.

    Reply

  81. mimhoff
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:34 pm

    So I was predicting good Cybermen. Cybermen who lead a better existence than if they were dead humans. And that Missy's plan was to mess with the Doctor's head by forcing him to help UNIT soldiers fight a "good" alien invasion.

    Instead we have the same Cybermen who are driven mad by living in metal suits unless they have the inhibitor. It's presented as a weakness when it should be a horrifying strength. Seb said it last week: wouldn't it be better if you can make it all go away…

    Anyway the dilemma was still there. Missy's army wasn't attacking anyone (ok except the ones on the plane)… what right does the Doctor have to tell them to kill themselves? Especially after Danny called him out moments before.

    Reply

  82. Steven
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:45 pm

    It tends to be marked with specific reference to WW1 over here. The poppy itself is tethered to a specific space, so it tied that meaning, but obviously the feelings it evokes and the message can be applied more broadly.

    So I think it's specific, but specific in that WW1 acts a prism to make a more general observance, if that makes sense.

    It's been marked this year by a big display over by the Tower that is ambitious and clever but honestly, I can't stand it. It has visual impact but – for my tastes – it just feels wrong. I can't even articulate why – but it just seems to reject what I'd understood the day to mean. It feels more like a display of imperial pride – WWI recontextualised as a show of power rather than an avoidable, pointless tragedy.

    Funny how we associate the poppy with Afghanistan. I don't doubt this was anything other than unintentional but the boy was a ludicrously appropriate poppy stand-in. The choice Danny made was a beautiful way to mark the day, and the boy he chose to save just happened to – I understand – be from a country we went to war with or in, whose country is symbolised by the same flower.

    My understanding of Remembrance has always been that it's a mark not so much of pride at our performance but of regret – that the war didn't have to happen. Danny was able, in a small way, to make good on that wish.

    I'm probably being incoherent but I thought it was one of the most beautiful, touching, best and really, really necessary things the show's ever done.

    Reply

  83. Matthew Blanchette
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:45 pm

    Yeah… WAY too depressing. A rewind could've been sorely appreciated.

    Reply

  84. Matthew Blanchette
    November 8, 2014 @ 11:54 pm

    Except that Osgood is never mentioned again. Not once. Not even by name. 🙁

    Reply

  85. Matthew Blanchette
    November 9, 2014 @ 12:00 am

    It's a companion departure in the same way "The God Complex" was, I reckon. Hopefully, it's not undone as badly as "Complex" was by Series 7A, by comparison.

    (Not that I'm saying Series 7A was all-bad — just unnecessary, both thematically and diagetically.)

    Reply

  86. Anton B
    November 9, 2014 @ 12:03 am

    So…It's clear the secret title of this story (its shadow name) is Remembrance of the Cybermen. Finally the clunky "I hate soldiers" seeding throughout series 8 paid off with the redemption of both our new soldier boy Danny and our old one, the Brigadier. Oh and also we get to metaphorically and traditionally bring back all the war dead through the Afghanistani boy's resurrection. Resurrection of course being the main theme of this finale which disinterred a number of old corpses (UNIT, The Master, Gallifrey etc) and dangled them in front of our eyes for our amusement while the Cybermen littered the background, bumbling around in their own graveyards.

    The cold open fake out that the whole season had been a sham and, somehow, Clara was the Doctor (even down to Jenna Coleman's top billing in the credits and her eyes replacing Capaldi in the graphics) was sublime.

    Missy was beautifully bonkers and her murder of Osgood after the Doctor's subtle invitation that she might join him to explore "all of Time and space" was chillingly effective. I can't believe either of them are really dead though. I look forward to a future episode Resurrection of the Mistress..

    On the whole this finale was a series of enjoyable pay-offs, call-outs and homages over a backdrop of business as usual Cybermen Earth invasion and barmily convoluted Master/Mistress plotting.

    Fave bits – Clara's eyes, the morgue named after Dodo Chaplet (a classic series companion who vanished without a send-off) predicting Clara's own low key departure, Seb's "Permission to sqeeee!", the reference to both The Twilight Zone and The Sensorites when the Cyberman looms outside the plane's window, the geek argument about Skybase being on Captain Scarlet not Thunderbirds leading to the best Doctor name drop ever – he danced with Sylvia Anderson!, the whole Bond skyfall sequence, "Never trust a hug. It's just a way to hide your face", the Doctor smashing the console, you could see his rage but also Capaldi' s reverence for the prop.
    Finally just as the opening credits were metafictionalised by Clara the closing ones were post modernly invaded by Santa! Oh well, if Robin Hood's real…

    Reply

  87. Dan
    November 9, 2014 @ 12:09 am

    Ah yes, I'd forgotten about that, so perhaps it's the boy being sent back fully intact that is the strangest part of it.

    Hard to imagine even Missy being able collecting all those billions of consciousnesses mind you. (It's also against my better judgement to use the word "consciousness" in this way, but as the principle was more or less established in The Deadly Assassin, I'll just go with it.)

    Reply

  88. Nyq Only
    November 9, 2014 @ 12:09 am

    I'd like to establish, for the record, that if I die and come back as a cyberman with emotions then…that would be really really cool and I'd have no problems with it at all.

    Oh and CYBERzombies? Yeah, weaponised, armoured zombies. 🙂

    I could have just kept watching that.
    Osgood's death? Hmm a bit to cynical – too clearly meant us to accept that the Doctor would kill the Master in cold blood. Nastiest, most horrific part of the show.

    1. Dark Water
    2. Listen/The Caretaker
    3. Death in Heaven/Kill the Moon
    4. Mummy on the Orient Express
    5. Deep Breath
    6. Time Heist
    7. Into the Dalek
    8. Flatline
    9. In the forest of the night
    10. Robots of Sherwood

    Reply

  89. Triturus
    November 9, 2014 @ 12:26 am

    unnoun, Rebecca

    The Absorbaloff in Love & Monsters was read by some people as being representative of RTD's views on fans (well, maybe one fan in particular), wasn't it?

    Anyway, I'm not saying that's what Moffat intended here, just that I wondered if it would be more grist to the mill of those who don't like him.

    Reply

  90. Dustin
    November 9, 2014 @ 12:33 am

    You've been quite coherent.

    There's a huge culture shock for me with this line:

    "My understanding of Remembrance has always been that it's a mark not so much of pride at our performance but of regret."

    American historical recollection, and acts of public memory like Veterans Day, aggressively shun any expression of regret or tragedy. "Imperial pride" is the sole mood in our official remembrances.

    Reply

  91. dm
    November 9, 2014 @ 12:47 am

    The bravest bit was Danny's face. I was dreading seeing him looking ok and healthy like CyberJamesCorden, so the more explicit body horror really did wind me. Gomez was truly brilliant and needed more time with capaldi. I want her back. Next season. I think the Doctor transported her just before the brig shot her. I was really glad they didn't cgi nick's face at that point.

    Really though, were so many good ideas thrown up in this story. I really wish it had stuck with one or two of them and explored them more (or at all, in the case of the President Doctor- guys, foreshadowing is not an end in itself)

    Overall, a bit of a disappointment. There was enough in there for me to like it, but, unusually for the season, there was very little to recommend to a non fan. Listen is something I would point to and say "this is why this show exists", Death in Heaven was more "this exists because this show exists".

    There were some outright missteps in the plotting. The scene of the doctor working out 3W's plan? That's what the whole previous episode was for! The joke of the Doctor being way behind the audience was cute last week but this is where it felt like an actual error on the part of the script. There seemed to be some confusion over humanity's awareness of Cybermen, too- at first they don't recognise them, then in the Dodo funeral place the news report was familiar with the term, then back on air force one the news report called them something like "strange silver figures" or whatever. This stuff doesn't really bother me but was a bit emblematic of a script which was messy and probably needed a few more redrafts.

    I'm sure there were better takes of Samuel Anderson saying "THE PROMISE OF A SOLDIERRRR!!!" than the genuinely hilarious one they used. It was probably on par with sparkly Jesus doctor.

    I can forgive a lot of this because it's really been a cracker of a season, but, in this commenters eyes, it tripped a little embarrassingly on that last hurdle.

    Reply

  92. dm
    November 9, 2014 @ 12:59 am

    Also I really think the glowy Danny talking nonsense scene with the kid would have been much better like this:

    It is 3AM, Clara is sitting up in bed. She might even have coffee.
    Flashback- the doctor explains that the bracelet should be able to send one person back
    We hear a weird sound. Clara lights up and runs to the hallway.
    Her face drops when she sees the boy, he has a note with him from Danny that explains it all, with a sorry at the end.
    Clara cries slightly, wipes the tear away and hugs the boy.

    What's annoying here is that moffatt's strength has always been this kind of meaningful gut punch, but this scene was such a mess.

    Reply

  93. 5tephe
    November 9, 2014 @ 1:15 am

    Haven't taken time to read all the (105) comments before this one yet, so will go back and do so later.

    I have loved this season, if not every episode, and thought that this finale was a worthy send off for it. But I do just think that the Doctor's realisation of his nature within his own story as more of a Trickster character didn't feel earned.

    One of the things I liked most within this season was Danny's critique of the Doctor as an officer. And here we had that FANTASTIC scene where he predicts all of the Doctor's flowery speeches melting away, and they do. And it turns out to be all for naught. SUPERB.

    After all, as Phil has often pointed out, the character is built out of the tradition of the Victorian Genius. He has always been a white man, who knows he is superior to everyone else, and drops into other peoples cultures and interferes with them – often violently – based around his own moral perceptions.

    To have him just have a moment of introspection, realise he doesn't want to rule the universe and hand the potential off to a man he knows will do the right thing with it (that the Doctor could himself have done) just feels like it dodges the critique.

    And I do find the whole Humble Soldiers are Noble and Good a bit on the nose. Centenary and Remembrance day or not. Or even BECAUSE of those factors.

    But look, a fun ride, and a lot to recommend it.

    Just because I haven't done so yet:

    Listen
    Deep Breath
    Dark Water/Death in Heaven
    The Caretaker
    Flatline
    Mummy on the Orient Express
    Into the Dalek
    Time Heist
    In the Forest of the Night
    Kill the Moon
    Robot of Sherwood

    Reply

  94. mimhoff
    November 9, 2014 @ 1:34 am

    Moffat and Gomez also grew up close to Glasgow, so they had to add that bit.

    (I'm from Brisbane. I'm not sure why we were on the list. Or Marrakesh)

    I should check again which cities got cleared of pollen at the end.

    Reply

  95. Aylwin
    November 9, 2014 @ 1:44 am

    "Your stupid pudding-brains!"

    Reply

  96. John Peacock
    November 9, 2014 @ 2:22 am

    I've honestly never thought that (even though, whenever that particular individual turns up on documentaries about the two subjects on which he considers himself the absolute authority I mutter "It's Jabba the Hutt" under my breath), but now you mention it, it's brilliant. I may even have to watch the episode again.

    Reply

  97. Aylwin
    November 9, 2014 @ 3:21 am

    I liked this a lot more than last week's, though that probably has a lot to do with the fact that the best stuff here was at the end rather than the beginning, so it climaxed rather than fizzling. (Which of course is how it works with episodes, but not necessarily with series – as I see it, the reason Sherlock series 3 got a rocky reception was because it kept the Moffat (well, all-Moffat) episode back until last, giving people a chance get tetchy about the weaknesses of the others, whereas the first two series started with the Moffat episode, leaving the audience in such a blissed-out post-orgasmic haze that the shortcomings of what followed barely registered.) This was dazzling-but-messy Moffat of the Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon variety rather than the well-honed near-perfection of his solely-authored Sherlocks, his Davies-era Doctor Who stories, or the likes of The Eleventh Hour, A Good Man Goes to War or Listen. Still, Missy was great, there were some killer lines (notably the hugs one of course – ouch), the emotional punches hit home (for me, anyway) and the thematic threads were pulled together pretty well (even if the flashback montage was a bit heavy-handed, showing some lack of confidence in the storytelling and/or the audience).

    Not at all sure about the Doctor being got off the hook by the Cyber-Brig, though (quite apart from the general yikes factor of that whole idea – also, where is he going when he flies off at the end? Is he going to join Jenny Who and Rusty the Dalek in their spinoff?). As with Kill the Moon, the writer is stacking the deck to protect our heroes from their choices. It rings false because it's the readiness to pull the trigger that counts, not whether your bullet is the one that kills (there's nothing more slyly, cravenly phony than the blank round in the firing-squad rifle). And it seems particularly odd in a scene loudly echoing His Last Vow, given how that was as much as anything a critique of the have-your-cake-and-eat-it cop-out of Doyle's original story, where the hero resorts to brute-force criminality and the villain is murdered with the endorsement of hero and author, but the hero gets to keep his hands clean. There was a clear-eyed, uncompromising moral gutsiness about that which struck against the pervasive repertoire of storytelling conventions that indulge the audience's appetite for murderous purgative vengeance while deflecting responsibility for it from their heroes, and thus from them. This felt like a backward step into that slippery artifice, which feels the more disappointing in a season characterised by its ambition both to look unsparingly on the Doctor's moral and emotional compromises and to advocate nonetheless for his underlying integrity.

    Reply

  98. jane
    November 9, 2014 @ 4:10 am

    She's not mentioned by name, but the Doctor surely looks pained when he discovers her broken glasses.

    Reply

  99. Jesse
    November 9, 2014 @ 4:30 am

    If only Ed Wood had thought to put Bela Lugosi in a Cyberman suit.

    Reply

  100. What Happened To Robbie?
    November 9, 2014 @ 4:38 am

    Speaking of 8th Doctor homages, did anybody else see the bit in the morgue with the banging from inside the lockers as a reference to the TV movie?

    Reply

  101. John Peacock
    November 9, 2014 @ 6:28 am

    I don't really do rankings, myself, but as I'm avoiding work right now, the ranking of rankings as of Sunday November 9th, 16:14:

    1 Listen
    2 Dark Water
    3 Death in Heaven
    4 Mummy on the Orient Express
    5 Deep Breath
    6 Flatline
    7 The Caretaker
    8 Kill the Moon
    9 In the Forest of the Night
    10 Into the Dalek
    11 Time Heist
    12 Robot of Sherwood

    Reply

  102. Prandeamus
    November 9, 2014 @ 6:37 am

    I did rather think that, but I don't think it was an out-and-out homage.

    Reply

  103. What Happened To Robbie?
    November 9, 2014 @ 6:42 am

    I need to check this because I've seen a lot of reviews/commentary along the lines of "so now the Doctor can go back to Gallifrey," seemingly based on the idea that the Master lied about the co-ordinates. My impression was they were the right co-ordinates (and didn't the Doctor say "she was telling the truth"?) but the Master had destroyed Gallifrey and that's what the Doctor was lying to Clara about.

    Did I miss something or did other people miss it?

    Reply

  104. Prandeamus
    November 9, 2014 @ 6:45 am

    Or maybe Anne?

    Reply

  105. William Silvia
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:03 am

    Thanks to you I finally listened to "Master" last night (it was one of many audios I bought for $1 during the big sale event). I don't regret it.

    Reply

  106. William Silvia
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:11 am

    That was in Time Crash. LINDA had been established the prior season as being a stand-in for the fandom, and the Doctor there goes on to establish that he can't stand them.

    Reply

  107. William Silvia
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:13 am

    Somebody else pointed out to me that they thought he was in the Nethersphere. This is very strange considering that it created a body, and he had been downloaded from the Nethersphere, but I'm forming some theories about that.

    Reply

  108. Owlie
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:20 am

    the Doctor was lying about Missy telling the truth, just as Clara was lying about Danny being fine.

    I think Gallifrey is still out there, and it's extremely valuable leverage for Missy.

    Reply

  109. What Happened To Robbie?
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:26 am

    Thanks, there was a lot to take in. Will probably do a rewatch tomorrow

    Reply

  110. BerserkRL
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:27 am

    In "Time Crash," the 5th Doctor is established as not liking fandom — but in the same episode, the 10th Doctor is established as being a fan.

    Reply

  111. Seeing_I
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:34 am

    One can only assume the actress' other commitments made further appearances unfeasible? And maybe, like Penelope Wilton, she requested to be written out with a bang?

    Either way I am super-disappointed we won't see her again, especially after being teased with the possibility of her becoming a companion. But then, the moment he said that, I dreaded a Lynda with a Y situation 🙁

    Reply

  112. BerserkRL
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:38 am

    A pity that Amy and this Doctor never got to interact; would have been fun to see the two imperious Scots tearing away at each other.

    Reply

  113. Seeing_I
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:38 am

    Intentionally calling back "The Massacre," an early example of the Doctor refusing to act out of duty to history, and being excoriated by his companion as a result.

    Reply

  114. BerserkRL
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:39 am

    It's actually Clara's second departure, since she left at the end of "Kill the Moon" as well.

    Maybe they can have her depart at the end of every episode. "Oh no, Clara departed! You bastards!"

    Reply

  115. BerserkRL
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:46 am

    I was really glad they didn't cgi nick's face at that point.

    Especially since his face would presumably have been in worse shape than Danny's.

    Though on the other hand, I don't know; the resurrected dead from hundreds of years ago must surely have gotten some upgrading beyond the exoskeleton?

    In other news, the previous episode's title "Dark Water" doesn't really make full sense until this episode.

    Reply

  116. Seeing_I
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:48 am

    I thought it was a very satisfying way to end the whole "the Doctor hates soldiers" bit which was at its most obnoxious in "The Sontaran Stratagem" and "The Caretaker. Yes, the Doctor has always been wary of the military, with good reason, but thousands of kids who love Doctor Who have a parent or relative or friend's parent, etc, in the military. How were they supposed to take that kind of simplistic, Viet Nam era lefty contempt for them? But it seems we've finally put that to bed, with the wonderful "You'll sleep safely tonight" and the Doctor's chastening.

    Reply

  117. BerserkRL
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:51 am

    Why can't the Doctor find Gallifrey the same way Clara found Danny?

    Reply

  118. BerserkRL
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:52 am

    And why does he still need the TARDIS key?

    Reply

  119. BerserkRL
    November 9, 2014 @ 8:00 am

    Just had a thought: could Clara's reciting reams of Doctor Who trivia but still being dismissed by the Cybermen as unimportant be a reference to the "fake geek girl" trope?

    Also, Missy must have panicked during "Miracle Day."

    Reply

  120. Alan
    November 9, 2014 @ 8:58 am

    To me, Osgood is a symbol of one of the things I've disliked about UNIT since the new series began — the slightly creepy hero-worship of the Doctor that culminates in this story with the idea that, in a sufficiently bad crisis, UNIT will arrange for the Doctor to be given dictatorial powers over the whole planet.

    I liked Colonel Mace, who started off awestruck but quickly became short with the Doctor when Ten started acting like a jerk (i.e. like Ten normally did). I liked Erisa Mogumbo, who started off awestruck but was prepared to abandon the Doctor on an alien planet when it seemed necessary to protect the planet. I did care for Malcolm, and I did not care for Osgood and the fetish-scarf she wore to commemorate someone she'd never met who left UNIT before she was born. If we're going to have something like UNIT and have it be at all plausible, I'd rather it be a professional organization rather than a fan club.

    Reply

  121. Chicanery
    November 9, 2014 @ 8:58 am

    Listen
    Flatline
    Mummy on the Orient Express
    Dark Water/Death in Heaven
    Into the Dalek
    The Caretaker
    Time Heist
    In the Forest of the Night
    Robots of Sherwood
    Kill the Moon

    Reply

  122. xen trilus
    November 9, 2014 @ 9:10 am

    So Moffat nicks RTD's old trick of interrupting the depressing companion departure with a goofy, non-sequitur intrusion into the TARDIS – except, as you might expect, he takes it to the next metafictional level. Santa has been watching the story and bursts in to deliberately create tone dissonance, because Clara parting on such an bleak and unresolved note would be a shame.

    Reply

  123. BerserkRL
    November 9, 2014 @ 9:29 am

    I just remembered that Clara says the Doctor's been married four times. Presumably that makes a) Susan's grandmother, b) Marilyn Monroe, c) Elizabeth I, and d) River Song. Though the doctor previously claimed (b) didn't count, so it could be someone else.

    Clara also referred to the Doctor's clone daughter Jenny in the present tense. Doesn't the Doctor believe her to be dead?

    Reply

  124. BerserkRL
    November 9, 2014 @ 9:40 am

    Moffat's "love is not an emotion" is channeling Wittgenstein: "Love is not a feeling. Love is put to the test, pain not. One does not say: 'That was not true pain, or it would not have gone off so quickly.'"

    Reply

  125. elvwood
    November 9, 2014 @ 9:53 am

    Quite possibly

    Listen
    Dark Water/Death in Heaven
    Flatline
    The Caretaker
    Kill the Moon
    In the Forest of the Night
    Robot of Sherwood
    Mummy on the Orient Express
    Into the Dalek
    Time Heist

    though this will change over time. The top two are in my all-time top 20. At the other end, even Time Heist is ranked higher than the rearguard from every season since the show began…except for classic seasons 7 and 10, which I can see are boosted by a huge helping of nostalgia. Allowing for some natural fading excitement, I anticipate season 26 also creeping ahead by this measure so long as you let me watch the DVD re-edits, but not likely any of the others (for a good while, at least). Awesome.

    Reply

  126. elvwood
    November 9, 2014 @ 10:37 am

    Remembrance Day is such a mix. The British Legion (the charity selling red poppies) does great work, basically doing much of the job of looking after soldiers and their families that should be done by the governments we elected who sent them out to fight in the first place. But the media focus makes it feel more like a recruiting day for Queen and Country than the expression of regret that Steven so eloquently describes. That's why I love the rejection, in this episode, of the use of the dead to promote further war, and why it's so much more appropriate that Danny finishes it than the Doctor.

    (I buy – and will continue to buy – red poppies to support the work of the British Legion. I decided last week that I would no longer be wearing one, though, because the transmitted message is currently all wrong for me.)

    Reply

  127. Jesse
    November 9, 2014 @ 10:39 am

    Oh, OK:

    Listen
    Flatline
    Dark Water/Death in Heaven
    In the Forest of the Night
    Kill the Moon
    Time Heist
    Mummy on the Orient Express
    The Caretaker
    Deep Breath
    Robot of Sherwood
    Into the Dalek

    Reply

  128. Seeing_I
    November 9, 2014 @ 10:52 am

    @ Alan – Tom Baker left UNIT before a LOT of people were born, but they still love the scarf.

    Reply

  129. Matter-Eater Lad
    November 9, 2014 @ 11:35 am

    I thought he was only engaged to Marilyn Monroe.

    Reply

  130. David Anderson
    November 9, 2014 @ 11:55 am

    I think the focus on the first World War in the UK is largely because the First World War was the point from which mass war memorials were wanted. Almost every village in the UK has a memorial to the First World War dead.
    And there's Wilfred Owen, who was a seriously able poet, and who didn't have a chance to write about anything except that the war was a colossal waste of life. And he's a standard set-text in school.

    The Poppy display at the Tower: it's UK dead only, it's highly decorous, and 'In Flanders Field the poppies grow' is a horrific poem which says that if you stop fighting you're letting the dead down.

    Reply

  131. mimhoff
    November 9, 2014 @ 1:02 pm

    Does Santa's appearance prove that the Doctor is in fact a good man?

    Does Santa visit good Daleks?

    Reply

  132. Glenn
    November 9, 2014 @ 1:37 pm

    The Doctor might believe Jenny to be dead, but Clara was probably one of the soldiers who watched her wake up and run off.

    Reply

  133. duckbunny
    November 9, 2014 @ 1:41 pm

    The Doctor has already been to the returned Gallifrey. Clara knows this, and he does not.

    At the time, she had presumably forgotten that Gallifrey was lost; humans tend to forget things. At the time, she was protecting his sense of wonder, and the safety of his timeline – it's not a good idea to meet your younger self.
    But that still happened. I suspect it won't be called back to, because it would be an unsatisfying way to resolve the Gallifrey situation. It would be a crying shame not let the Mistress* use her knowledge to wind the Doctor up some more. But it did happen. That's quite a betrayal on Clara's part, even if she didn't mean it at the time.

    (The navcom was turned off, so I'll buy that the Tardis has no record of where they went, because that would be convenient and leave the plot in the state I want it to be.)

    *Of course she escaped. I don't need to know how.

    Reply

  134. Anton B
    November 9, 2014 @ 2:54 pm

    I hate lists. Here's my list.

    Listen (because the monster was imaginary…or was it?)
    Kill the Moon (because it was cheeky and mythic)
    In the Forest of the Night (because it was cheeky and mythic and referenced Blake and was set in fairyland)
    The Caretaker (because the Doctor is wrong pretty much throughout)
    Dark Water (because Michelle Gomez)
    Death in Heaven (because Michelle Gomez and Capaldi)
    Flatline (because 2D monsters in Bristol and Clara becomes the Doctor)
    Robot of Sherwood (because we're all stories in the end)
    Into the Dalek (because I've never seen any one enter a Dalek eye stalk psychedelically before)
    Mummy on the Orient Express (because there was a Mummy on the Orient Express)
    Time Heist (because something had to come last)

    Reply

  135. Anton B
    November 9, 2014 @ 3:00 pm

    I ommited Deep Breath. Probably because as the series opener it had a specific job to do while simultaneously functioning as a hangover from series 7. So, for me, it has no rating in series 8 but comes top of any list of series 7.

    Reply

  136. Bennett
    November 9, 2014 @ 3:23 pm

    Santa Claus only cares if you are naughty or nice. Goodness has nothing to do with it.

    Reply

  137. Jesse Smith
    November 9, 2014 @ 6:07 pm

    Right, it was a cheeky tie-in to the five-minute plot twist that maybe Clara was telling the truth and she really was the Doctor all along.

    Reply

  138. Jesse Smith
    November 9, 2014 @ 6:08 pm

    Yeah, I suppose the minute the Doctor said "All of time and space" we should have expected that she was toast.

    Reply

  139. Chris
    November 9, 2014 @ 6:44 pm

    In "The Two Masters," The Master teams up with The Master for an overly complicated scheme, and wouldn't you know it? The Master is betrayed by The Master.

    Yes, the same thing that always happens, but so much more entertaining when she does it herself. Bananas.

    Reply

  140. Alan
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:40 pm

    Just rewatched and three things popped out at me.

    1. Clara apparently agrees with me on the ethics of Ten repeatedly protecting the Master from people who deservedly wanted to kill him for his crimes. "If you ever had the chance to kill the Master and didn't, then this day is all on you," or words to that effect.

    2. The two UNIT guys "guarding" Missy must have been the least attentive guards in the history of that storied organization. They didn't even notice when she put on her makeup to show-off the fact that she'd removed her handcuffs. Also, Osgood looses cool points for not being genre savvy enough in dealing with Missy. She's read the Master's file. The correct response to "I'm about to kill you" is not "Shut up!" but "Soldiers, shoot this woman in the kneecap."

    3. I just woke up and sat straight up in bed upon realizing the following (apparent) plot hole. Missy arranged for Clara to travel with Eleven. As a result, Clara was on hand to help Eleven ensure that Gallifrey was not destroyed and could eventually come back … at which point, Missy would be free to come back and arrange for Clara to travel with Eleven. Timey-wimey indeed.

    Reply

  141. encyclops
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:40 pm

    Just like poor old Rita. The Moffat era fridges 'em too. 🙁

    Reply

  142. encyclops
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:47 pm

    "…everybody talk about / pop muzik"

    Reply

  143. encyclops
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:49 pm

    Does it? That scene is all about a dead man.

    It's a great scene, of course.

    Reply

  144. encyclops
    November 9, 2014 @ 7:55 pm

    A season finale that divides fandom? The devil you say! 😉

    I love "Ark in Space." But the bubble wrap is impossible for me to take seriously. It's one of very few Doctor Who effects that actually detract from the story for me.

    Reply

  145. encyclops
    November 9, 2014 @ 8:08 pm

    I have trouble seeing how a non-fan (or at least someone who doesn't have some knowledge of Clara, Danny, and the Doctor) would make much of "Listen" beyond some rather cleverly worded platitudes about fear. I like it, but the motivating premise still doesn't make much sense to me even in context of the rest of the series, let alone out of it, and it seems like the character developments (the Doctor putting the soldier idea in Danny's head, Clara putting ideas about fear in the Doctor's) don't weigh much without the rest of the season. I'd love to hear from someone who tries to use that episode to turn on new fans (as people apparently try to do with "Blink") to know if they can really make heads or tails of it. To my mind it's more like "The Doctor's Wife" — it's a treat for fans, but not the right place to start.

    Reply

  146. encyclops
    November 9, 2014 @ 8:12 pm

    I'm not sure I agree with your first paragraph, but I'm entirely with you on the second.

    In my memory the Brig burned himself up too, but so many people are raising the question that I'm thinking I didn't see that, just falsely remembered it.

    Reply

  147. Kit
    November 9, 2014 @ 10:05 pm

    How many countries got their own "cyber-cloud clearing" scene inserted for local broadcast?

    Reply

  148. David Anderson
    November 9, 2014 @ 10:12 pm

    Some of these (e.g. Caretaker) are consciously based on subjective factors (I don't like comedy of embarassment). In the Forest of the Night could go either way on a rewatch. Kill the Moon might go up as well.
    1. Listen
    2. Mummy on the Orient Express
    3. Flatline
    4. In the Forest of the Night
    5. Time Heist
    6. Dark Water / Death in Heaven
    7. Deep Breath
    8. Robot of Sherwood
    9. Kill the Moon
    10. Into the Dalek
    11. Caretaker

    Reply

  149. Nyq Only
    November 9, 2014 @ 10:39 pm

    Ah! Good question, I'd wondered if the shot of the Sydney Opera house was only for Aussies (although we did get a name check fro Brisbane).
    Did Americans get something else?

    Reply

  150. elvwood
    November 9, 2014 @ 10:56 pm

    Jesse, that's exactly what I did think when he said that.

    Reply

  151. Aylwin
    November 10, 2014 @ 2:58 am

    I'm not sure I agree with your first paragraph

    Well, I expect I'll disagree with it myself if and when I rewatch, or just think things through a bit more. There was all sorts of wrongness of the sort I usually jib at (and surely only the metatextual talisman of the Master's plotting track-record could make it possible to look directly at Missy's schemes without being struck blind), but I was in an accentuate-the-positive mood and was able to let myself be swept along in a way that I just wasn't with, say, In the Forest of the Night, or the latter part of Dark Water. Normal crabby service will be resumed shortly.

    Reply

  152. Leslie Lozada
    November 10, 2014 @ 2:58 am

    Oh, that would be an interesting idea for the ten year anniversary.

    Think about it.

    Reply

  153. Matt Bogen
    November 10, 2014 @ 6:01 am

    (a) Seconded. I hope this incarnation comes back again.

    (c) I think they touched on it very briefly. The BBC America audio was awful for me (as it has been all season), but when they're outside looking at the Cybermen flying out the dome of St Paul's, the Doctor says something about them being in a dimensionally transcendent space inside the church. It flashed by very quickly, so perhaps I misheard or misunderstood.

    Reply

  154. encyclops
    November 10, 2014 @ 6:38 am

    Don't get me wrong, I loved it too — I mean "not sure" literally, not in the sense of "I know I don't, but this is the polite way to say so." There's a lot in that first paragraph I know I agree with, and some other stuff I'd have to think through more closely to work out. (I don't like "Eleventh Hour" or "Good Man" as much as this blog collectively does, for example.)

    One thing I'm still confused about re: Missy's insane scheme: the entire Clara part seems completely unnecessary to me still. Why was it necessary to bring the Doctor into St. Paul's at all? Why wasn't it enough just to get him to come running when the Cybermen started down the steps, which could have been done any number of ways?

    I mean, I know the conventional wisdom has it that Pip 'n' Jane were right and the Master's schemes are always "devious and overcomplicated. He'd get dizzy if he tried to walk a straight line" but surely with everything else we're revisiting and revising we could find a way to reimagine that silliness too. Was there anything particularly loopy about the Harold Saxon gambit?

    Reply

  155. John
    November 10, 2014 @ 7:24 am

    What does "unearned" even mean in this context?

    Reply

  156. John
    November 10, 2014 @ 7:29 am

    Tegan's from Brisbane, no? But surely if you're going to do a Moroccan city, it should be Fez?

    Reply

  157. BerserkRL
    November 10, 2014 @ 8:08 am

    No, we got the Sydney Opera House too. We also got New York; but I'm betting you did too. Multiple versions would probably be more expense than the BBC would be up for.

    Reply

  158. Nyq Only
    November 10, 2014 @ 8:09 am

    I don't think it is a plot hole. The Doctor was already going to end up at Trenzalore prior to Clara. Although we were told that the Doctor dies at the battle of Trenzalore we aren't told that he wasn't victorious. So the original fate of the Doctor could well have been that he dies saving Gallifrey, which allows it to return in some sense and thus release the Master.
    Given that, everything makes sense.
    The Master returns only to discover that the Doctor is dead – not just dead but triumphantly and heroically dead having spent the rest of his life fighting off the combined forces of badness. This is naturally intolerable to the Master. Luckily if there is anybody in the universe who knows something about not staying dead it is the Master.
    The Master therefore starts a plot to do the following:
    1. stop the Doctor from dying at Trenzalore (without changing the other outcomes)
    2. find a way of destroying the Doctor's legacy
    3. only then kill him
    It all makes sense 🙂

    Reply

  159. BerserkRL
    November 10, 2014 @ 8:10 am

    The two UNIT guys "guarding" Missy must have been the least attentive guards in the history of that storied organization.

    You said it!

    Reply

  160. BerserkRL
    November 10, 2014 @ 8:14 am

    I thought he was only engaged to Marilyn Monroe.

    He says he's engaged to her; then he says he's going to marry her; then at the end of the episode he says "that was never a real chapel," implying that there was some sort of ceremony but its genuine nature is in question.

    Reply

  161. Nyq Only
    November 10, 2014 @ 8:16 am

    Yes we got New York also (although the shot could have been generic big city). Oh well 🙂

    Reply

  162. BerserkRL
    November 10, 2014 @ 8:20 am

    "I don’t like the military, but I have so many friends in it." — The Shalka Doctor

    Reply

  163. BerserkRL
    November 10, 2014 @ 8:22 am

    "He is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man."

    Reply

  164. BerserkRL
    November 10, 2014 @ 8:23 am

    Fez is cool.

    Reply

  165. David Anderson
    November 10, 2014 @ 11:28 am

    Both God Complex and Town Called Mercy feel like leftover scripts from the Davies-era. (Not a bad thing in the one case.)

    Reply

  166. brownstudy
    November 10, 2014 @ 11:40 am

    For those who are interested, here are links to Paul Cornell's "5 Brilliant Things" about both episodes of the finale:

    http://torbooks.co.uk/2014/11/03/five-brilliant-things-weeks-doctor/ (love #2)
    http://torbooks.co.uk/2014/11/10/five-brilliant-things-weeks-doctor-series-8ep-12/ (#1 and #5 are linked, I think)

    Clara has had her bad day. I do hope the Christmas episode gives this character and her portrayer a happy ending. Coleman had the chops to do good work, even in 7b, but this series has been hers as much as it's been Capaldi's. Damn, but Moffat and his team have a great eye for talent.

    Reply

  167. John
    November 10, 2014 @ 1:20 pm

    Santa, be a pal and tell me. Am I a nice man?

    Reply

  168. encyclops
    November 10, 2014 @ 1:21 pm

    They don't feel like RTD leftovers to me, particularly "God Complex."

    But then I don't really think "fridge" applies every time a female character is killed, so I probably shouldn't have repeated the word. Both Rita's death and Osgood's serve to ratchet up the tension for the audience, to remind us that people we care about are going to die if the threat isn't stopped (not just quislings and cowards), but they aren't needed to motivate the Doctor, who is already in motion.

    I hate that Osgood is dead. I adored her, like almost everyone else did, and would much rather have had her improbably rescued than Kate Stewart. But if there was any character whose death could offset the cutesy/bananas appeal of Missy, and remind us that she's a dangerous psychopath (for once, a character who actually deserves the diagnosis but as far as I can recall never receives it), it's Osgood. So I get it.

    Reply

  169. brownstudy
    November 10, 2014 @ 1:44 pm

    What got to me about Osgood's death was Missy's crushing of her glasses afterward. It was a cruel and contemptuous gesture from Missy. For Missy to think that the Doctor would accept her plea for his friendship kind of boggles the mind after that.

    Reply

  170. Alan
    November 10, 2014 @ 2:42 pm

    Honestly, it was obvious that she escaped. Over the course of episode, we see Cyber-Danny kill three Cybermen with a red blast with an explosive after-effect. We also see Missy kill Osgood and three others with a red blast with an explosive after-effect. We also see Missy teleport off the plane surrounded by a blue nimbus that looks like the transmat thingies from Time-Heist. And then at the end, Cyber-Brig kills Missy … with a blue energy blast that looks more like the transmat thingy from Time-Heist than the red explosive blast we're accustomed to. Transmats and death rays — now color-coded for our convenience.

    Reply

  171. Richard Pugree
    November 11, 2014 @ 2:56 am

    I thought Father Christmas's lines at the end made it pretty clear that it wasn't the end of Clara's story? But I may have misheard.

    Reply

  172. Richard Pugree
    November 11, 2014 @ 2:57 am

    Well, she used to die at the end of every episode…

    Reply

  173. KMT75
    November 11, 2014 @ 4:45 am

    Questions although the thread is probably already dead:

    1) What was the point of the cold open with Clara declaring she was the Doctor? It seemed to me like it was just filler. She obviously isn't the Doctor, and the story didn't hinge on her assuming the role of the Doctor as Flatline did. She was pretty much a nonfactor. Yet they went to the trouble of replacing Capaldi's eyes with hers and switching their credits around in the open so that she got top billing as if there was some point to the whole thing.

    Wouldn't it have been a whole hell of a lot easier to just have the Cyberman in the tank where Clara was be Danny? They did use her mind to steer the TARDIS to Danny. But then he apparently was somewhere else and then magically showed up at 3W in time to stop the other Cybermen from killing her so her whole "I'm the Doctor" thing didn't work anyway. Did she think they would see the credits?

    And 2) When do we find out how they escaped the sand piranhas in The Caretaker? Do we have to wait for the episode where we find out how Clara and the Eleventh Doctor escaped his time stream at the end of Name of the Doctor?

    Oh, and the ridiculous ending with the kid that made no sense whatsoever. If Danny blew himself up to save the world or whatever he did, how did he wind up in the nethersphere again? Who uploaded his mind? It wasn't Missy or Seb or Doctor Chang. Does everyone who dies now automatically get uploaded into the Time Lord hard drive that's hidden in London? And what exactly did Danny send back? It looked like the kid but the kid doesn't have a physical body with him in the nethersphere. It was just his "soul." Shouldn't his physical body be rotting in the ground somewhere in Afghanistan. Why is he in Clara's apartment? And how the hell does she think she's going to return him to the mountains of Anbar Province without a frigging TARDIS?

    Rankings:

    Listen

    After that it's pretty much blah to ugh.

    For me this was the worst run of episodes since the show came back in 2005. I think only the Martha season comes close, and even that has Human Nature and Blink to overwhelm the crap.

    Dark Water is pretty awesome, but then virtually all of the multi-part season finales start off with a bang before going down in flames because they can't stick the landing – Doomsday being the exception.

    The only thing keeping Kill The Moon and In The Forest of Night from being worse than Twin Dilemma or Fear Her is Capaldi's brilliance.

    Reply

  174. encyclops
    November 11, 2014 @ 6:15 am

    Some of us have been foolish enough to subscribe to notifications. 🙂

    1. As the Doctor says in "Waters of Mars," the purpose is "fun." Specifically, it's the fun of "OK, we know she's not Missy now, as many people have speculated. So what does the 'Clara Oswald has never existed' line from the trailer mean now? It means…as many other people have speculated…she's a future incarnation of the Doctor!" It's a payoff to the "Doctoring" of Clara thread in the season. In terms of the plot, it clearly does delay her deletion until Danny shows up. She's just talking to try and keep herself alive until the cavalry arrives; she doesn't know it's going to arrive, she's probably desperately looking for a chance to run, but it's better than being shot. Finally, it's also an echo of the scene from "Deep Breath" where she has to talk her way out of a jam until the Doctor arrives.

    If that's not enough for you, hey, I totally understand, but that's what the scene did for me.

    2. Clara talked the sand piranhas to death and then used their metal-shearing teeth to free herself and the Doctor.

    That ending with the kid: I got nothing.

    Reply

  175. KMT75
    November 11, 2014 @ 7:56 am

    My problem with both is that they go nowhere. Neither does anything to advance the story and neither gets paid off in any way, let alone a meaningful way.

    The whole sand piranhas thing exists solely so the Doctor can ask Clara why she has two coats.

    Reply

  176. Anton B
    November 11, 2014 @ 1:34 pm

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    Reply

  177. Anton B
    November 11, 2014 @ 1:39 pm

    As encyclops suggests, the 'Clara is the Doctor' cold open is the jokey pay-off to a series long arc tease. The fact that the pay-off is a fake out, including the opening credits, is all part of the gag. Or, if you like, the meta-fictional game. Or, if you want to get really arty, the post modern use of humour as a signifier that what we are experiencing may be more complex than a standard linear narrative.

    The 'sand pirhanas' scene had two functions.
    1.to let us know that the Doctor and Clara are having adventures between the ones we are shown on TV. That, again, the narrative we are viewing is non linear and incomplete.
    2. To show that Clara is juggling a life of adventures in Space and Time with holding down a responsible job and dating Danny.
    The fact that they escaped is self evident. The method of their egress is irrelevant. Just as Missy's inevitable return from being zapped by the CyberBrig will require no explanation.

    The Afghan kid…yeah that was crap wasn't it?

    Reply

  178. KMT75
    November 11, 2014 @ 2:25 pm

    I can't remember a single nanosecond from Asylum of the Daleks to Death in Heaven where it was even hinted that Clara might be a future regeneration. And outside of Flatline where she had to play the role of the Doctor because he couldn't I also didn't get any sense of her being "Doctored." She was the same unber-competent character she was since we first met Oswin. The only real difference is she now has an annoying, mopey, vanilla boyfriend who she occasionally has to lie to because he's so unimaginative and boring that he doesn't want any part of her adventures with the Doctor.

    The non-linear narrative? I guess. I think it's more cheap and gimmicky than complex. At least the ways it's being used since series 7A.

    Reply

  179. ferret
    November 11, 2014 @ 6:13 pm

    Was happy the Sydney Opera House was shown at night – yes, it's obvious but so many tv shows/films would miss that.

    Reply

  180. ferret
    November 11, 2014 @ 6:16 pm

    my headcannon – Missy somehow hypnotised the guards without Osgood noticing. However, it doesn't excuse Osgood falling for every basic trick in the book there: appealing to her vanity, to her insecurities, come closer, come closer – ugh, maybe Osgood was being master-mesmerised too.

    Reply

  181. ferret
    November 11, 2014 @ 6:29 pm

    I can't say I actively disliked Osgood, but two negatives were glaring to me that – if she had become a companion – would have needed ironing out much the same as Donna's were on her second appearance.

    Firstly, that awkward scene in "Day of the Doctor" where she's shutting her eyes and whispering "The Doctor will save me, the Doctor will save me" to herself – ugh, just embarrassing and definitely a huge not-companion-material flag.

    Secondly – stemming mainly from "Day of the Doctor" again, Osgood is apparently very insecure about her appearance (and smell). Sure, fine – why not? But don't just slip a pair of glasses on an actress who is obviously highly conventionally attractive and declare her to be the ugly one. I know conventionally pretty people have self-image hang-ups too, but it's a major TV/movie trope that is tired and awful.

    Unrelated – I don't know if anyone has particularly mentioned she's presumably related to or at least name-checking UNIT's engineer Osgood from the Daemons.

    Reply

  182. Daru
    November 11, 2014 @ 11:29 pm

    Not really into lists but I'll play:

    Listen/ Kill the Moon
    Forest of the Night & Dark Water / Death in Heaven
    Deep Breath/ Flatline/ The Caretaker
    Mummy on the Orient Express
    Robot of Sherwood/ Into the Dalek
    Time Heist

    Groupings feel better for me.

    Reply

  183. Daru
    November 11, 2014 @ 11:30 pm

    That did catch me.

    Reply

  184. Daru
    November 12, 2014 @ 3:27 am

    Missed all of the discussion, but loved the episode. Did get hooked by the pre-credits sequence and almost believed it for a minute. So saddened by the death of Osgood, both in regards to character and by the way her death was used. I do get why it works in the sense of underlining the danger of Missy though.

    Adored Gomez's work during the episode and utterly convinced (just because I don't want her gone!) that we will see her again.

    And I virtually cheered at the Brigadier's appearance (even though he is a zombie Cyberman).

    Reply

  185. Anton B
    November 12, 2014 @ 3:28 am

    Serves em right for using Derren Brown as a cover story in DotD. The Mistress has obviously upped her game hypnosis wise.

    Seriously (!) I was yelling at the screen at that point.

    Reply

  186. Daru
    November 12, 2014 @ 3:59 am

    Oh golly those guards were awful! Hypnosis is the only answer really.

    Reply

  187. Nyq Only
    November 12, 2014 @ 7:23 am

    //Who uploaded his mind? It wasn't Missy or Seb or Doctor Chang. Does everyone who dies now automatically get uploaded into the Time Lord hard drive that's hidden in London? And what exactly did Danny send back? It looked like the kid but the kid doesn't have a physical body with him in the nethersphere. It was just his "soul." Shouldn't his physical body be rotting in the ground somewhere in Afghanistan.//

    Missy's bracelet let her move from the real world to the Nethersphere (we see her in both) and presumably the bracelet transferred Danny's mind to the Nethersphere at death and also allowed him to send back a person (i.e. the bracelet could generate a person in the real world from the data version of the person it contained). This consistent with us seeing Missy in both worlds and also with the Master's previous attempt to generate a version of himself based on information coded in a device (his ring which survived his cremation).
    It also means that Missy only needed a back-up bracelet to ensure that she survived any attempt to kill her.

    Reply

  188. Alan
    November 12, 2014 @ 8:00 am

    Are there rally people who thought for even one millisecond that Clara was the Doctor and her whole back story had been faked? Really?? Every time this season that Clara has been left alone with the bad guy, she has adopted the same, highly effective strategy — say whatever is necessary to get the bad guy to not kill her. As we saw in Robots of Sherwood, that includes brazenly lying in the villain's face about her importance. It is so perfectly Clara to trick a Cyberman out of killing her by boldly pretending to be the one person in the universe that a Cyberman would never kill rather than capture that I'm amazed any viewer was fooled by it.

    Reply

  189. Anton B
    November 12, 2014 @ 9:03 am

    @Nyq Only i.e. the bracelet could generate a person in the real world from the data version of the person it contained

    Thus potentially allowing the return of River Song (perhaps the one we've already seen in NOTD?) from the library.

    Reply

  190. Anton B
    November 12, 2014 @ 9:13 am

    See my answer to KMT75 above.
    Really it was one of those Moffat tricks like the final reveal of how Sherlock survived his Reichenback Fall. No-one really believed he could be dead and the savvier viewer had already worked out that 'how?' was the wrong question. So yes, no-one really believed that Clara had never existed. The fun came from seeing whether she was bluffing or whether Moffat had come up with some more convoluted timey wimey explanation. The title graphics were the icing on the cake.

    Reply

  191. Anton B
    November 12, 2014 @ 9:42 am

    @KMT75
    I can't remember a single nanosecond from Asylum of the Daleks to Death in Heaven where it was even hinted that Clara might be a future regeneration. And outside of Flatline where she had to play the role of the Doctor because he couldn't I also didn't get any sense of her being "Doctored"
    From memory, apart from all the hints that the Doctor is testing and training Clara and that she considers herself his equal and often acts as his superior.
    Deep Breath – She takes control and works out the clues in the Doctor's absence.
    Into the Dalek – She 'instinctively' knows which telepathic circuit to destroy inside the Dalek's brain.
    Listen – the TARDIS telepathic circuits automatically take her to Gallifrey.
    Robot of Sherwood – She believes Robin Hood is real and outwits the Sherriff in a Doctory way.
    The Caretaker – She can 'click' open and shut the TARDIS doors.
    Time Heist – why is she needed on the mission?
    Mummy – the look she gives the Doctor when she says "I love you" on the phone.She wants to be him.
    Kill the Moon – She totally takes control and makes the decision that will save the Earth and the hatched space dragon.
    Flatline – she becomes 'The Doctor'
    Forest – She basically tells the Doctor how to resolve the dillema
    Dark Water – She totally takes control of the Doctor and the TARDIS. knows where all the keys are and telepathically flies the TARDIS to the Nethersphere.

    Reply

  192. Lenoxus
    November 12, 2014 @ 2:35 pm

    I feel almost entirely alone for not putting Mummy on the Orient Express near the top — thanks elvwood and Daru!

    I found that episode disappointing because, for no good reason, we weren't shown the moment of the Doctor having saved everyone — we just have to take his (and the engineer's) word for it. Also, it was the beginning of Clara's new wave of deception against Danny, and that relationship, which I'd been liking up to that point, was put on a permanent bad track.

    I'm also not super fond of Kill the Moon because the big dilemma turned out to be a false choice, and thanks to luck more than the characters' actions or insights (compare to similar story The Beast Below, where Amy actually figures out why the choice is a false one). Clara's forcibly stopping the bombs is magically rewarded by that choice apparently having few negative consequences.

    So what did I like? Listen best of all, by far. Flatline is up there for personal reasons (my fondness for the book Flatland). I also find Caretaker and Deep Breath really good, with no reservations. The four episodes whose flaws I am willing to forgive are Time Heist, Robot of Sherwood, Into the Dalek, and Forest of the Night.

    I still don't know where I fit the finale episodes into this.

    Reply

  193. Pôl Jackson
    November 12, 2014 @ 9:09 pm

    Been on vacation; only just now watched it. Shocked that no-one here mentioned the Doctor's line that the Brig came back in "England's darkest hour".

    Because of course Alistair has been Arthur all along. How did I miss that?

    Reply

  194. Daru
    November 12, 2014 @ 10:59 pm

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    Reply

  195. Daru
    November 12, 2014 @ 11:06 pm

    Wow! Pôl that is a great connection to Arthur, thank you!

    How did I miss that?

    Thematically, mythically this links (loosely) with an old Scottish Arthur story called Canobie Dick that I know of. It involves an ancient fairy hill which is a prominent landmark, and has larger than natural caverns within (i.e. like St Paul's), and under it there is a mystical wizardy figure (Thomas the Rhymer appearing out of time) residing who had disappeared for some time and all believed dead.

    He draws, by machinations, Canobie Dick (a liar and cheat in his life) under the fairy hill – and there lay sleeping Arthur and his knights awaiting their time for Albion. Dick is tested to his limits to choose and wield the correct instrument of power (the sword or the horn) and awaken the knights. The outcome will then determine whether this is the right time for Arthur to rise – he chooses wrong and the cavern collapses, Arthur (the heroic soldier arisen) states that he will return during Albion's darkest hour and returns to sleep with his knights. Sometimes Dick barely escapes with his life, and in some versions dies as the cavern collapses. The mystical wizard vanishes…

    It might just be my own head, but there are loads of connections here:

    ~ Use of a prominent landmark that's been made to be bigger on the inside.
    ~ A mysterious figure reappearing.
    ~ Manipulation of lead character(s) through their lies/life and drawing them to the magical space.
    ~ A test to choose to wield power.
    ~ The assumption of power and who wields it.
    ~ Long assumed dead rising/ an army rising from under the earth.
    ~ A mythic figure from England's past rising.
    ~ Key character dying – the cost of contacting the Otherworld.

    I'm not saying that the two stories are directly transferable, but it looks to me that key elements relate.

    Reply

  196. Nyq Only
    November 13, 2014 @ 8:39 am

    I think the possibility of the Library resurrecting River Song already existed by the set. The Library storage was used as a buffer for teleporters and the teleporters are implied to be on a model of disassemble/digitise/transmote/reassemble. As the Library has the data for River's body and her mind it can, in principle, just teleport an intact River into the real world (OK the library is full of ravenous shadow beasties but that is a different problem). Ressurecting River is no harder that returning Donna from being "saved".

    Reply

  197. Anton B
    November 13, 2014 @ 12:32 pm

    I thought the distinction was that Donna and the others were 'saved' while still alive. Anyway, as I said, Moffat's already resurrected River in NotD. She's available to return whenever he, or anyone else, wants to use her with no more explanation required than the sand piranhas got.

    Reply

  198. mengu
    November 13, 2014 @ 10:42 pm

    Danny's blasts were blue, but they did not vaporise their targets.

    Reply

  199. John Seavey
    December 14, 2014 @ 4:27 pm

    Only two? Alastair Reynolds thinks you lack ambition. 🙂

    Reply

  200. Jarl
    December 21, 2014 @ 4:41 am

    I've heard British people use "never" in that sense to mean "that can't possibly be", as one might when denying the truth. The example that comes first to mind is "That is never the time," from the first episode of Jonathan Creek, which left me stumped in my official capacity as an American Viewer, having to look up what he meant.

    And that's a very lovely thought about Miracle Day.

    Reply

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