Well he’s been this Doctor a very long time … all that time chipping at the wall to the end of time. He’s grown accustomed to his face.
Almost all of the NuWho Doctors seem to want to hang on. Tennant had his galactic tour (and “I don’t want to go!” whinefest) prior to his regen into 11 and 11 was holed up on that planet for thousands of years prior to his own regen and now 12 had his billion-year wall-punching and his reluctance to regen.
I would have liked a little more foreshadowing of the deus ex puddle resolution, but Bill got her kiss so I’m happy. Also John Simm trying to fuck him/herself before stabbing/shooting themselves in the back was a fitting ending. I’ll be sad to see the last of Missy, though: of everything during Capaldi’s tenure, Michelle Gomez playing the Master as a sort of Addams Family Mary Poppins was a triumph.
Well, 12 had his billion years - but it was only a few days/hours (I don’t remember how long each took to reach the wall) in his actual memory, since he rebooted each time and had to figure it out over and over.
Nice to see the return of David Bradley - a clever bit of casting, I thought.
I was really just making a throw-away joke.
More seriously NuWho’s Doctors’ attachments to their forms has been a staple and Capaldi’s claim of his being “The” Doctor … “the original” was worked in there … obviously foreshadowed the ep’s ending but was jarring to hear at the time.
In retrospect the foreshadowing was there with the heavy focus on the importance of Bill’s tears, and, per the Doctor, the hope those tears represented. Most of us (well me anyway) just weren’t quick enough on the uptake to understand what it was foreshadowing.
And no question Missy was a triumph throughout. Nardole too … they took what began as simple clown comic relief and made a real character with elements of badass and definite confidence.
Right up to that point, several times while she was a cyberman, I kept yelling at my screen whenever she and the Doctor were on it together…
“You killed me, you bastard!”
Because yeah, Amy Pond got trapped in the past, and Clara got herself killed (by her own actions) and then got the silly ‘still alive’ ending, so I figured this was one companion that the doctor got killed by his actions and delays.
Well, that and they were only there due to his hubris, looking for a nice cosy controllable adventure to test Missy in action, and then assuming he could talk an angry scared guy with a gun into dropping it and following him. Everything awful that happened to Bill was his fault.
I actually liked the episode, but yeah I couldn’t help noticing there were an awful lot of recycled elements: Bill’s line “I waited for you” was literally the same line old Amy said in “the Girl Who Waited.” Bill freaking out at being a Cyberman was the same thing Oswin Oswald went through in “Asylum of the Daleks.” The siege at the farm was similar to the siege of the town in “the Day of the Doctor.” The Doctor saying “I don’t want to go” and resisting the regeneration was the same as David Tennant’s departure in “End of Time.” And Bill’s departure was the same as Clara’s. It’s definitely time for some new blood.
We had to have three years of Clara, but only got series of Bill. :mad: I would like to see Bill again, but that’s hardly likely given the new change in showrunners. Nardole got a bit of a short shrift as well.
As for Missy, I will certainly miss her. But as for the Master being dead? OK, I am making a prediction right now that “the Doctor” whom twelve met in the cliffhanger is not his old self, but a new incarnation of the Master.
Eh. Doubt it. The TARDIS was specifically piloted to that location by someone who knew where it should go (where the Doctor needed to be).
I noticed all the similarities to prior great moments and took them as an “homage montage” from Moffat, who however weak some of his stuff had become lately (S8 in particular), really found his mojo again in his final one, IMHO.
From the time he stole the shuttle to crash it through the roof to his defense of the farm with his laptop to his quiet farewell to Bill and the Doctor before leading the children to safety and a new life, the only reason anybody survived that debacle is because Nardole was a badass. They showed all those elements of his skills and capabilities throughout the season, but the last episode brought them together magnificently. Nothing secret about it, baby-doll.
Oh, I almost forgot one of my favourite moments of the episode, probably of the series: John Simm, before the big battle, putting on eyeliner. All those times you see the villain in full makeup, and you wonder, well, did you just freshen up your mascara or what…
I thought that he was practising to be Missy. And yeah, it was a great moment. That, and his outraged “Round face?!”
All of this. I like Bill and I like Capaldi, but Nardole may well be my favorite character of this season. Matt Lucas was a revelation.
The show just works better with three companions. Jack and Rory are two of my favorite characters.
So, if Missy is the future incarnation of the Master, and she has memories of the events that took place here (she remembered to bring the spare part for the TARDIS), how did she not remember killing Missy?? Maybe she understood that it couldn’t be prevented (fixed point in time and space blah blah) but at least she shouldn’t have been so surprised.
Missy said she had very few memories of the interaction with her earlier incarnation, and even her memory of the command to always carry a spare part was only attributed to “some scary lady I once met”; this kind of loss of memory seems to be standard whenever the Doctor meets his earlier incarnations, too.
I’ve been calling it “deus ex aqua” but I like your version better. That was the point where I seriously contemplated putting my foot through the screen. Yeah, I’m glad Bill’s not a Cyberman anymore but really? Really? *That’s *how you do it?
What works well is the dynamic with one starry-eyed companion swooning over the Doctor, and another quietly sceptical but ready to get the job done. It worked so well with Rory and Mardole, even if it stuttered slightly with Danny Pink when they forgot to give him a personality beyond “Clara’s boyfriend”. It would be interesting to see it work with a male companion being the one Doctor-struck and a woman rolling her eyes.
Yep, overlapping timelines and all that. Same reason why the Doctor didn’t know that he actually didn’t blow up Gallifrey.