World Enough And Time was, in my opinion, a rather flimsy, lacklustre episode; for all its phenomenal world building and set design. In contrast The Doctor Falls is rich with backstory, calling to mind the Siege of Trenzelore and the Doctor's entire history with the Master/Missy as the Doctor makes a final stand against his recurring enemy The Cybermen. But the history of this televisual universe Whoniverse is also evoked in the smallest of moments and by the smallest of things - confectionary. Peter Capaldi's Doctor has reached into his coat pocket for jelly babies before (Mummy on the Orient Express) and although his performance as the Twelfth Doctor has owed much to Jon Pertwee's portrayal of the Doctor, there have also been moments when Tom Baker's fourth Doctor shines through incandescently.
DOCTOR: "I'm not doing this because I want to beat someone, or because I hate someone, or because, because I want to blame someone. It's not because it's fun and 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."
This episode opens on the Doctor being taunted, questioned and tortured by the Master and Missy - working in concert - before waltzing on the rooftop of a delapitated hospital. The metallic roof-lidded-sky is aflame. It is raining ash. Images of the Blitz loom large. But such levels of destruction can easily stand for any war, not just the Second World War. Their position on the rooftop is, of course, symbolic. Both Missy and the Master feel omnipotent, both are happily lording it above the pesky mortals being marched to their doom far below the three timelords. Mothers, fathers, lovers, children all doomed to be - upgraded. But Missy and the Master are also lording it over their unconscious foe - once childhood friend - who comes round to find himself hand-cuffed to a wheelchair.
Unlike the meta-ish, post-modern dialogue in the previous episode (which felt forced and far too self-referential) the banter here between the Doctor, Missy and the Master sings. It's a gorgeous interplay of caustic wit; Simm and Gomez capturing the camera and all narrative space as they thrust and parry verbally whilst waltzing. Peter Capaldi is almost sidelined - aptly, given the subtext of defeat at their collective hands. This first defeat foreshadows what is to come despite the Doctor's one moment of triumph i.e. reprogramming the Mondasian Cybermen to target beings with two hearts, which is captured in flashback and emphasised by the use of black and white footage. I wonder if the lack of colour makes the flashback clearer to a child viewer? Of course it may simply have been a directorial choice for visual impact, in much the same way as the battlefield is later palid and ash-gray.
Steven Moffat once had the Doctor ask Clara Oswald to tell him if he was a good man. Here Moffat asks two questions: Firstly, whether a person can retain their true sense of self when disfigured or altered beyond all recognition. Secondly, Moffat asks whether a Gallifreayn leopard can change its spots.
Missy was the Master. She is also the woman who might have evolved (dare I say matured?) after decades spent guarded - or visited - by the Doctor in her Quantum Fold chamber. That which could have been her tomb, it is implied, might in fact have become her chrysalis. And so Missy could truly step into the role of companion, following in Romana's red-shoed footsteps. That is the promise Missy holds out to the Doctor, with a light touch of a manicured hand. That is the promise she is robbed of fulfilling, when stabbed in the back by a blast from the Master's sonic screwdriver.
Throughout this episode Missy and the master are fantastically flirtatious, and just a little twisted. It probably isn't incidental that their interplay called to mind historical rumours which outlived the Borgias. I thought of rumoured incest as well as fratricide, when Missy pressed the Master up against a beam in an outdoor barn, their repartee hopefully flying over and above a younger viewer's head.
MASTER: "By the way, is it wrong that I er..."
(They both glance down.)
MISSY: "Yes. Very."
Their dance at the top of the episode foreshadows their metaphorical dance which spans the episode. Theirs is a choreographed power-play, a study in one-upmanship. For even when the Doctor removes himself from the equation, the master cannot help but cast himself in the role of adversary; even against herself.
Simm lounges, pontificates and shows off in a beautifully theatrical way that - together with a brandished eye-liner pencil - reminds older fans of Roger Delgado's iconic portrayal of the Master. But then, it is Michelle Gomez as Missy who Moffat truly and rightly focuses on here. Missy is the one who brilliantly magics up a solution by speaking a causal loop into existence so that a needed TARDIS spare part is suddenly in her pocket; her previous self made to remember to always carry it.
Doctor Who often highlights the theme of a person's choice, choosing to act in the world, or universe. In this episode Missy realises it's time for 'her' to stand with the Doctor, time to be a companion and not an adversary. That choice is a personal victory for the character and, I was gutted by the fact that ’she’ robs herself of that victory by blasting herself in the back, no matter how fitting and true the moment is to the history of the character of the Master.
Gomez is wonderful in this and has been superb in her role throughout her time on Doctor Who. That said, in this episode - this swan song of Bill Potts's - it is Pearl Mackie who truly shines. Bill, finally doomed by her adventures in the TARDIS - having previously outrun death following her near miss in Oxygen - moves to stand at the Doctor's side on the battlefield as he himself makes his last stand. But this battle is secondary to the mental battle she fights, in both this episode and the previous one.
Bill retains her humanity and sense of self thanks to the image she holds of herself, which the Doctor reminds us is held so strongly in her mind's eye due to her experience in 'Lie of the Land'. Bill still perceives herself as herself; even when there is little, or nothing, to show of the young woman she was in the Mondas Cyberman she's become. And, realising the Doctor cannot undo what has been done to her, she chooses not to live - forever to be feared and loathed - with none able to see her humanity but the Doctor, the alien who loved her, and a young girl who looks upon her with innocent eyes.
It isn't incidental that the child who is brave enough to visit Bill (exiled from the house and quartered in the barn) is a little girl with afro hair, pulled into bunches, reminding us that not too long ago Bill might have been just that little girl, taking jelly babies from a Gallifreyan Time Lord. Bill could easily be the child bringing a mirror to a being who appears monstrous, but is anything but. And, in her role as companion to the Doctor it could be said she has done exactly that. The Doctor has been 'The Oncoming Storm' as well as a good man, but travelling with him has always been fraught with danger for his companions - even if his hearts have always been in the right place.
In The Doctor Falls Twelve makes a stand against an army of Cybermen to try and buy time for a gaggle of human children to escape from one solar farm level to another. Simply put, he makes an impossible stand to try and save children from a formidable enemy. In so doing we're reminded of the shows main audience, in that Doctor Who is family viewing. It isn't strictly BBC children's programming but it is a show aimed at a family audience, and a younger viewer for whom the wider world to be explored can still be as magical and miraculous as the universe itself. This, to my mind, is the main reason why the homestead being fortified and protected is a group home. With a nod to British history and the Second World War we see children evacuated from out of a war zone level to a different solar farm, by Nardole, in scenes which call to mind war films such as The Great Escape.
But as we're told, this isn't Colditz, nor The Waltons on the prairie, even if Missy overtly nods to the latter reference. It is possible that there's an allusion being made here between a pastoral, agrarian, society being invaded by an army of cybermen and mankind currently on the cusp of creating our own destruction through the further development of AI technologies, but that could easily be a reach.
What is unmistakable is that as well as reworking last series' finale The Doctor Falls revisits themes seen in Extremis. It isn't just the obvious, ie River Song's prayer to her husband
RIVER: "Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis. This is what he believes, and this is the reason above all, I love him. My husband. My madman in a box. My Doctor."
- but the fact that the majority of that episode takes place against a virtual backdrop. Here much of the habitat is revealed to be made up of algorithmic code. This may be why Nardole suddenly becomes the 51st Century IT guy, tasked to save the day using a laptop (which just happens to appear) to hack into an interface and change rifles into ray guns. Not that this makes the fictional, computerised, world created here plausible. If the solar farm habitat is holographic (which the appearing, yet otherwise camouflaged, lift-banks suggest) how can crops with true nutrients grow? How can humans be kept alive - fed, clothed, watered - until conversion? Are we to assume food can be created out of thin air (and molecular reconfiguration of said air) on a solar farm which is pure holographic illusion? Before anyone reading reaches for a Star Trek replicator, Steven Moffat is suggesting a holographic atmosphere can nurture a living biosphere. I can't see it. But then again, Wikipedia tells me I’m wrong about replicator technology. Not that children watching will notice any discrepancies. What they will notice is Nardole coming into his own, which was long overdue.
Matt Lucas has been more than a little sidelined this series. It matters not that Nardole gets to step up because Bill is no longer in a position to do so. It matters even less that we barely remember Nardole is only partly human and partly cyber-augmented. He is the Doctor's last link to River and, through her, to 'his Ponds'. He came to stand at the Doctor's side, River's diary in his hand (which has to be a temporal aka continuity blooper given her diary is on the shelf in The Library) and it is Nardole's voice which weaves what little mytharc this series has into being. Here, leading the children to safety, he will be the one to stand guard in place of the Doctor, watching over the remaining humans for as long as it takes the Cybermen to take the farming level. This is his Trenzelore.
Unlike the previous series finale which was full of jubilation, with Me and Clara stealing a TARDIS and running away, this finale reworks those themes but does so in a far more poignant way. The Doctor loses his final stand. He fails Missy. And he fails Bill Potts.
Upgraded in the previous episode, Bill is saved in a beautiful moment which leads us back to the first episode The Pilot. Unlike River Song and a version of Donna Noble, both of whom Steven Moffat saved to a digital heaven, Bill is saved by love - or the endless possibilities of sub atomic physics; apt for someone travelling in the fourth dimension. Her tear, forever caught in the corner of her cyber eye, allows the alien pilot who came to love her to track her. And, being non-corporeal, (and through the power of deu ex machina) The Pilot is able to transmute Bill's physical body into an alternate liquid form.
"We are star stuff. We are the universe made manifest trying to figure itself out." (As spoken by Mira Furlan / Delenn in Babylon 5 by J.M.S)
Steven Moffat then neatly bookends the series with Heather!Pilot inviting Bill to travel the universe with her, as she did in the first episode. This call to adventure can of course be read as a metaphor for death, with the mysteries of the universe standing in for heaven. Or, it can be read metaphorically as growing up and stepping out into the wide, adult, world. It's a lovely moment when the Pilot gestures out beyond the TARDIS double doors promising to show Bill the universe, only to have Bill flirt and subvert expectations claiming greater experience and so saying she will have a thing or two to show her Pilot.
With Bill is dressed in glorious colour and the view outside the TARDIS doors made of bright turquoise and purple CGI graphics, there is nothing but light, colour and possibility here. It is a beautiful, visual, contrast to what has come before. But then Rachel Talalay's use of light and colour in this episode is utterly beautiful, particularly on the battlefield strewn grey with ash, burnt trees now black slashes in the landscape. All the visuals emphasising the moment the Doctor falls and the tragic moment when Bill finds his body on the battlefield, are gorgeous and arresting. So too the make-up special effects, creating wounds upon Peter Capaldi's ash daubed face.
When Bill sheds a tear over the Doctor, when she kisses his still form farewell, she is mourning his loss in the viewer's stead - mourning just as the fans for whom Twelve will forever be their Doctor mourn Peter Capaldi's departure from the TARDIS.
The episode tag with Peter Capaldi's monologue heralding the start of the Doctor's regeneration is interesting indeed, as well as phenomenally acted.
DOCTOR: "When the Doctor, when the Doctor was me. When the Doctor was me. It's starting. I'm regenerating. No! No! No! No! No! No!"
(The regeneration stops, and the Tardis has materialised.)
"Where have you taken me? If you're trying to make a point, I'm not listening. I don't want to change again. Never again! I can't keep on being somebody else."
Earlier in the episode the Doctor was definitely ready to die at the hands of the Cybermen. I'd also say that the fact that he leaks regeneration energy throughout the episode doesn't only denote injury but age, this beautifully encapsulated when he uses a tree branch as a walking stick. Suddenly he is an elder wizard complete, with wizard's staff, but also the quintessential wise old man. But here he resists change and loss of self. I wonder if Steven Moffat is purposefully nodding to David Tenant's portrayal of the Doctor and the way Ten tried to outrun his regeneration.
Ten/nant DOCTOR: "I can still die. If I'm killed before regeneration, then I'm dead. Even then, even if I change, it feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away, and I'm dead. What?"
Capaldi's physical acting in this episode is gorgeous, his attacking of cybermen with an algorithmic, augmented, sonic screwdriver a think of choreographed beauty. He looks graceful and powerful - right before he is felled, and the loss is all that more piercing.
This episode is a fitting conclusion to the last, a brilliant vehicle for Michelle Gomez, John Simm, Pearl Mackie and above all Peter Capaldi. It is also a strong finale to the series itself. Gripping, dramatic and majestic - just like a Peter Capaldi's portrayal of the Doctor.