Doctor Who – The Doctor Falls

Image (c) Stuart Manning. Yay!

" Pity… no stars… I hoped there’d be stars… "

This review will contain spoilers

The Cybermen are rising, Bill Potts is a Cyberman, and there are two Masters knocking about. Fortunately, thanks to a little Doctoring, the Cybermen are after the Masters as well, so that’s three Time Lords, one first generation Cyberman a community of farmers and… whatever Nardole is with three days to prepare to defend a synthetic farm from an army of upgraded warriors who have had centuries of their own time (thanks, relativity) to arm for the attack.

It is as hopeless a situation as the Doctor has ever faced, but running is not an option. It’s time to stand. And maybe it’s time to fall.

The Good

The use of Bill’s human form as opposed to her cyber-converted self was an effective visual shorthand for her remaining humanity.

Making things explode to make the farmers seem better armed was a more Whovian way of approaching a problem than making their rifles better.

The interaction between the Master and Missy was excellent, and Missy’s redemption was well done, if (deliberately) underwhelming.

“The original, you might say.”

The Bad

Not sure what was going on with the Doctor getting pissy that the Cybermen didn’t know him. Didn’t he deliberately erase himself or something?

I’m a little sad they went with David Bradley. William Russell does a killer First Doctor, although I guess at 92 he might not be up to a whole Christmas Special, and in fairness Bradley’s Hartnell is also the bomb.

The Ugly

Nothing glaring.

Theorising

So, has the Doctor gone back somewhere his old self already was, or is this an icy version of that pantemporal mental space from ‘The Name of the Doctor’?

Top Quotes

“Like sewage, smartphones, and Donald Trump, some things are just inevitable.” — The Doctor

“Without hope, without witness, without reward.” – The Doctor

“Winning? Is that what you think it’s about? I’m not trying to win. I’m not doing this because I want to beat someone, because I hate someone, or because I want to blame someone. It’s not because it’s fun. God knows it’s not because it’s easy. It’s not even because it works because it hardly ever does. I do what I do because it’s right! Because it’s decent! And above all, it’s kind! It’s just that… Just kind. If I run away today, good people will die. If I stand and fight, some of them might live. Maybe not many, maybe not for long. Hey, you know, maybe there’s no point to any of this at all. But it’s the best I can do. So, I’m going to do it. And I’m going to stand here doing it until it kills me. And you’re going to die too! Someday… And how will that be? Have you thought about it? What would you die for? Who I am is where I stand. Where I stand is where I fall.” —The Doctor, and the writers, finally get it.

Verdict

‘The Doctor Falls’ is easily the best Doctor Who season finale in years, although that’s not saying much. Bill’s fate is much less egregious than Clara’s, because while Bill doesn’t deserve a second shot at life any more than the hundreds who die in the course of a series, her doom was through no fault of her own, whereas Clara engineered her own death and escaped it by stropping at the universe until she got her own way. Not even the Doctor should ever get to do that, and Bill does not; she accepts what has happened to her, uses it to do what good she can, and is ready to die by the Doctor’s side when she is saved by Chekov's water nymph. Is it a cop out? I don’t think so. I'll miss Bill, and often that's the best thing you can say about a departing character.

The episode delivers on the promise of ‘Extremis’. ‘Without hope, without witness, without reward,’ the Doctor says, and the truth is… that’s not talking about him. It’s talking about Missy. Her arc may have been somewhat truncated, but her ignominious death – to choose the right course and be cut down for it, without a heroic moment – is all the redemption that she gets for the Master’s crimes. She doesn’t save the day; arguably, she doesn’t make that much of a difference(1); but in that moment, she is good. It’s honestly more payoff than the arc has deserved, because Moffatt’s Doctor Who does not do arc plot well. Whatever you may say about RTD, he had a deft touch with the arc words; Moffatt’s more involved and heavy-handed approach doesn’t work well with the overall episodic nature of the series.

7/10

(1) Although I guess closing the Master’s timeline is, in itself, likely to save lives.