I tediously repeat my belief that television Doctor Who has never got the Cybermen right. It has never made the horror of what they are feel real. This two part story gets it right. The Cybermen are terrifying and the process of their creation is revealed in all its horror.
We understand that process through what happens to Bill Potts. She’s a victim of the process and the audience's eyes.
The scene where she walks into the room with partly processed people and one of them is saying ‘pain’ over and over again is one of the darkest and bleakest scenes in all of Doctor Who and the realisation that all of the people in that room are probably the same but have had their volume turned down is a punch in the gut.
The story begins with the Doctor ‘testing’ Missy’s new found goodness by sending her on a mission with Bill and Nardole as her assistants. Missy will play ‘Doctor Who’. They answer a distress signal from a gigantic colony craft that is trying to escape from a black hole.
When a blue skinned crew member appears terrified and demands to know who is human things start to go wrong. Badly wrong. Bill is shot. Dead. Or nearly dead. Because before we know it some very creepy things turn up to take her away.
The story then splits into two. Bill’s story down in the lower part of the ship. The Doctor, Nardole, and Missy in the upper. But things are complicated. Due to the effect of the black hole time is passing faster in the lower decks than on the upper.
Bill meets Razor who will help her understand what is happening. Ten years pass for Bill before the Doctor manages to get down to the lower levels.
The cliffhanger at the end of the World Enough and Time comes together beautifully. Razor reveals who he is to Missy and Bill reveals what she has become. The Doctor is in trouble and Nardole does a runner.
The following episode starts with the Doctor trapped on a roof with two incarnations of the Master, CyberBill, and a bad headache. All the Doctor’s work with Missy seems to have been undone by her earlier John Simm incarnation. I like Simm’s Master in this story. He’s less big and more like a Classic Doctor Who Master than in his original run. Capaldi, Simm and Gomez play off each other magnificently and there’s some joy in having a multi-Master story. Simm maintains the Masters cruelty, but you can see that Missy isn't quite the same as she once was. Michelle Gomez is possibly my favourite take on the Master partly because she isn't a two-dimensional moustache-twirling villain. There's more to her than that.
Thanks to Nardole and the Doctor’s trickery they all – including the Master and Missy – escape to a higher level. A level which appears to be farmland and where children are protected from the occasional incursion of creepy pre-full conversion Cybermen. The way these things are used like scarecrows is another dark and enduring image. There was something World War One about it. Those bodies hanging on the wire in the aftermath of another failed attack.
Bill doesn’t initially know she’s been converted. Her self-image is still of her as her human body. And the second episode really explores the impact of that. Pearl Mackie and Peter Capaldi do a stonking work throughout. I enjoy The Master’s joy in rubbing The Doctor and Bill’s faces in the horror of her situation. Missy seems less joyful about it.
We build up to a final battle, where it becomes clear that the Doctor will die trying to save as many children as possible. The Master and Missy leave but not before the Doctor gives one of my favourite Doctor monologues in the series, which The Master squashes immediately. Again we’re not sure if it has had an impact on Missy.
The Master and Missy are about to depart. But Missy stabs The Master saying it The Doctor is right and it is time for her and the Doctor to stand together at last. Simm though kills Missy laughing madly as he goes down to his TARDIS to regenerate into Missy. Missy can’t regenerate, according to The Master, so she dies. And the Doctor will never know Missy was prepared to stand with him again, which might be as sad as anything else that happens in this story. Or in any Doctor Who story.
There’s part of me that wishes that Missy had been the end for The Master. I think Missy's arc was perfect to change the character into something more like The Meddling Monk and less like the insane mass murdering old school Master. But - as we shall see - this wasn't the choice made by the production team.
I sometimes think that perhaps post-2005 Doctor Who needs to rely less on The Master and The Daleks. The old series has a lot of monsters you could re-boot for a story or two. They’re not as iconic at The Master, The Daleks or the Cybermen but they aren’t as tired. You have to bring them back occasionally, but it is hard for them to be anything new.
The story ends with explosions, the return of the Pilot from The Pilot who restores Bill to something that isn’t a Cyberman but isn’t quite human. The Doctor, who is refusing to regenerate is placed in the TARDIS apparently dead.
But
you can’t keep the Doctor down. Even when he wants to stay down. The TARDIS
lands and the Doctor steps out into snow and ice where he encounters…well…a Doctor.