The Tsuranga Conundrum

 

SPOILERS (AS USUAL)

The Doctor and crew are on what looks like a junk planet searching for a piece of equipment. Why we don’t know and it doesn’t really matter because they stumble across a sonic mine and…oops. 

They wake up on an automated medical ship, which picked them up and is taking them to a medical station for further treatment. This is run by a Red Cross of the Stars, for want of a better explanation. There are two medical staff – Astos (Brett Goldstein)* and Mabli (Lois Chimimba). Everything else is automated. 

The Doctor, who is still in pain, isn’t at her best. She’s belligerent and bullying because she’s realised that they’ve left the TARDIS behind. She wants to turn the ship around regardless of the other patients. It takes Astos to bring her back from being a twonk. 

But then something hits the ship and breaks in. Launching one of the evacuation pods. The Doctor and Astos go port and starboard to investigate. Something is on board and it is playing havoc with the systems. Astos gets trapped in the remaining pod and dies as it launches and explodes.

The other patients are Yoss (Jack Shaloo), who is pregnant male Giftan. Giftan’s seem to look like humans, but both sexes can have children. Male adults have male babies. Female adults have female babies. They also gestate with a month. Yoss doesn’t think he can cope with having a child at his young age and is planning to give the boy away even if he doesn’t seem entirely at ease with that decision. This plot line gives Ryan a chance to consider how his father must have felt and he talks to Yaz about how his Mum died. It turns out Ryan found her. Tosin Cole plays all this well.

Then there is Eve Cicero (Suzanne Packer), decorated General and Pilot. She’s claiming to have Corden Fever, but her brother Durkas (Ben Bailey-Smith) thinks she is hiding something. Eve is also accompanied by Ronan (David Shields), her consort. Who is a ‘clone drone’ aka an android. 

The thing that arrived aboard is a Pting. Now my favourite thing about the Pting is that they designed it to be a tiny, semi-cute looking thing and then make it one of the most dangerous and destructive creatures in the universe. I think that’s funny. 

The Pting are indestructible and eat everything and anything, although apparently they’re not carnivorous. The deaths of people are just an unfortunate by-product of their diet. They don’t care about people.  

The other problem is that Tsuranga control has spotted the Pting aboard, which means that after three requests, they’ll blow the ship up as an emergency protocol. This means the Doctor, her friends, Malibi, and everyone else have more problems to deal with. 

At this point Yaz and Ronan go with the Doctor to protect the anti-matter drive and Graham and Ryan go with Yoss and Malibi at Yoss’s request as his waters have now broken. The Doctor, Eve and Durkas rig up a flight set up for Eve to fly the ship on an alternative faster route. Although we know by this point that Eve has Pilot’s Heart, which means the strain of flying might kill her.

Yaz and Ronan drive the Pting away and the Doctor realises that the Pting is attracted to energy, so she rigs up a Pting trap involving a bomb and an airlock. The Pting swallows the bomb that was meant to destroy the ship and is ejected. 

By this point Eve has collapsed under the strain and Durkas flies the final part of the journey. O and Yoss has given birth and will keep the baby named Avocado Pear in honour of Ryan and Graham’s help. There’s a joke in here about historical misunderstanding in the Giftan education system. 

Having arrived at Resus One Malibi explains that they’ll be held for three days of isolation just in case but then they’ll teleport the Doctor and friends back to the planet they were found on. 

Eve is dead. Ronan will be shut down now his service is at an end. Durkas apologizes to him and asks Ronan if he will help encant for her and everyone joins in the short ceremony, which dwells on hope. A thing that the Doctor talks about a lot. 

I think I understand, having watched this episode, what Chris Chibnall was trying to do with his first series in charge. I think he was trying to bring Doctor Who back to its origins. A series of random adventures with an occasional educational aside. There’s a scene where the Doctor is explaining how the anti-matter drive works that allows Yaz to drop in things she learned at school. It feels like something from a Hartnell story. Perhaps that’s why there are four in the TARDIS crew. I still think four people is too many and I feel Yaz has mostly been the character who has suffered the most as a result. 

I might be wrong. I often am. But it makes sense of a lot of this season, including the mix of straight SF and not quite historicals. 

Anyway, I enjoyed this more on re-watch than I did the first time. It’s fun, I like the Pting, and the whole cast do a fine job even when the story doesn't give everyone enough to do. 

*Brett Goldstein has gone on to global levels of fame since this story was first broadcast thanks to Ted Lasso. 

Arachnids in the UK

The Doctor drops everyone off in Sheffield. But instead of heading straight off on her own, which she clearly doesn’t want to do she enthusiastically accepts an invitation for tea at Yaz’s. Along with Ryan. Graham goes back to his and Grace’s home. 

When there – after the Doctor demonstrates an ongoing ability not to do small talk – pops next door to collect a parcel. But outside the door Dr Jade McIntyre (Tanya Fear) is trying to get the next-door neighbour’s attention. They’re work mates. But she won’t answer.

Breaking in they discover that she’s been cocooned by an unnaturally large spider. 

Meanwhile Graham discovers the shed skin of another big spider and Yaz has gone to collect her Mum, Najia (Shobna Gulati), from the hotel where she works. Because she’s been fired by Jack Robertson (Chris Noth) the owner of the hotel. 

Robertson is clearly meant to be Trump, even if Trump himself gets a name check.

 Jade has taken the Doctor, Graham and Ryan to their lab to discuss what she’s been working on – she’s a specialist in arachnids – and it turns out all the spiders in Sheffield have been going a bit mad. She shows the Doctor a map, which turns out to show that the one area empty of unusual spider sighting is the Hotel complex where Yaz and Najia are. 

So, we finally get everyone together. Just in time for the biggest spider that you’ve ever seen to smash out of a bathtub where Robertson is having a ‘scheduled bathroom break’. There is mayhem and screaming and Robertson’s bodyguard, Kevin (William Meredith) is dragged away.

 There’s a spider problem and everyone finds themselves webbed into the hotel. 

What is happening? 

Well, it turns out Robertson’s hotel is built over old coal working into which another of his companies, a waste disposal company, has been dumping huge quantities of waste, including material from Jade’s lab. Hence the spider problem. 

It’s kind of The Green Death all over again but with spiders instead of maggots. 

The Doctor decides that the best way to deal with the smaller spiders is to lure them into Robertson’s panic room via the vibrations from Sheffield’s best Grim radio station and give them a kindly suffocation. 

The biggest one, which is in the ballroom, they will herd out of the building using some kind of spa perfume-based concoction. But when they arrive the spider is dying. It is too big to survive. Its lungs can’t function properly. They aren’t meant to be gigantic. 

As everyone stands around watching a big spider suffocate to death Robertson walks in and shoots it. Thus, demonstrating that guns and people with them are bad. Except was it crueller than standing around watching the creature suffocate slowly to death? I mean the Doctor’s solution here seems very not like the Doctor. She’s basically willing to allow dozens of spiders to die slow deaths. A more Doctor Who solution surely would have been to round them up and load them into the TARDIS and take them somewhere where they could thrive. Perhaps I’m being harsh, but I find the Doctor’s moral grandstanding in this story particularly irritating. There’s no sign of her feeling bad that this is the solution she had to come up with. They were watching a spider suffocating - slowly - to death and were just watching. Not to mention killing ALL the other spiders. There's no attempt to come up with a solution that might save them. And yet the Doctor tries to play the great moral arbiter. It's utterly ridiculous. 

Robertson is a gun wielding American arsehole, although Chris Noth is a good enough actor to make him not seem too much of a clownish caricature. And I enjoyed his performance. 

Bradley Walsh is superb as he responds to coming home and dealing with the loss of Grace. There’s some good stuff between him and Tosin Cole too. Mandip Gill gets a bit more to do as we meet her family, but I still think she’s the character suffering most from the multitude of companions. 

At the end Ryan, Yaz, and Graham go back to the TARDIS to say a proper goodbye. Except they don’t want to say goodbye. They want to go with her. This ending scene is well played by everyone. You know the Doctor wants them to come, but she knows the risks and she wants them to know the risks. But they all have good reasons to go.

Rosa

 

Written by Malorie Blackman and Chris Chibnall this is a pseudo-historical. Blackman because the first writer of colour to write for Doctor Who in its entire history, which when I read it genuinely shocked me. 

The historical events are reasonably accurate, but we throw a white supremacist time travelling arsehole into the proceeding: Krasko (Joshua Bowman). 

Bowman plays Krasko like a football hooligan. You could see him being dropped into one of those mostly terrible films about football hooligans. His plan is to stop Rosa Parks from being arrested because he thinks this is where it all starts. And by 'it' he means the battle for equal rights. 

It is odd though that a British TV series would take a black American woman to write this story about. It isn’t as if Britain doesn’t have a long, long history of racism and colonialism. Or have heroes in the battle for anti-racism itself. But I suppose Rosa Parks has a global recognition that British figures might not have. Perhaps, at some point, we can tackle that issue. 

The thing that this story does do is remind you of how recent this stuff is and how it hasn’t gone away. There is no stinting on this from the beginning - Ryan gets slapped for touching a white woman even though his intention was just to return her glove. Sometimes people talk about these things as if they happen two hundred years ago. They didn't. 

It is when Ryan gets into trouble that they first meet Rosa Parks (Vinette Robinson) when she intervenes to calm things down. Reminding Ryan of what happened to Emmett Till. Vinette Robinson is excellent as Rosa Parks and is a solid centre to the story. The revelation that she is Rosa Parks and how star struck everyone is plays on throughout the episode. It is one of the aspects of time travel that often gets missed in Doctor Who. How do you NOT get star struck when you meet...Rosa Parks. 

 Once they realise what Krasko’s plan is they must stop his attempts to fiddle with time. It’s stupid plan. Something like this was coming and whether it had been Rosa Parks or someone else this wasn’t something that could be stopped. The arc of history was in the process of bending towards justice. Krasko is a pathetic. His plan is stupid, he’s a racist arsehole, and the Doctor runs rings around him. He's meant to represent the Trumpian modern right-wing backwards looking thug that seems to have become a recent phenomenon. But he's not the point. The point is to tell the story of Rosa Parks. 

Everyone is enjoyable to watch here. Vinette Robinson is fantastic as Rosa Parks. The main cast get to show their chops too. There’s a great conversation between Yaz and Ryan about racism when their hiding from a Montgomery Police Officer outside the hotel for example and Ryan’s genuine anger having to be held down. Graham gets a couple of good scenes too. 

First there’s the little conversation when he reveals that he knows the name of the bus driver because Grace told him that James Blake – the driver of the bus that Rosa Parks made her protest on – gave bus drivers a bad name. It brings back memories of Grace. Then there's the moment that the Doctor realises that they can’t get off the bus. Because if they do there will be empty seats for white people and therefore Rosa won’t have to move and history will be changed. They must play a part in the oppression. When it hits Graham Bradley Walsh plays it so well. He doesn’t want to be part of it, but he is. It is also a good way to make a subtle point about how white people are part of the structures of racism whether they agree with it or not. 

Rosa is an interesting story about a key moment in American history. It ends with a bit of a lecture though, which I think is unnecessary after the story. It’s a classic tell not show moment. I'm going to guess that Chris Chibnall wrote that bit. And we go out not to the end credit music but to ‘Rise Up’ by Andra Day. 

It isn't subtle. Sometimes though - as recent history shows - subtlety doesn't quite cut it.

The Ghost Monument

At the end of the last episode our four intrepid adventurers found themselves floating in space as the Doctor attempted to locate the last location of the TARDIS. 

Thankfully rescue comes quickly. Graham and Ryan end up on board a ship belonging to a woman called Anstrom (Susan Lynch). The Doctor and Yaz end up with Epzo (Shaun Dooley). Both ships are in a bad way. Epzo’s worse than Anstrom’s. 

Anstrom lands first. We don’t see it, but the implication is they crash landed. We do see Epzo’s crash landing quite impressively. Coincidentally it happens quite close to where Graham, Ryan and Anstrom are. 

So now the whole gang is together. The planet is called Desolation. It is out of its orbit. And it is the final stop in a race run by Ilin (Art Malik). The prize is enough money to set up home for them and their clans. This final stage they must get across the planet to the Ghost Monument. Once there the winner will be transported off the planet and the loser left behind. 

They are warned to not drink the water. 

Also, before Ilin leaves, he shows them a picture of the Ghost Monument that appears and disappears. It is the TARDIS. 

The Doctor is worried about why the planet is in the state it is in. Epzo isn’t. Rudely. Neither is Anstrom. But less rudely. 

After some fiddling about with a boat to get it working again, which allows a little exploration of Ryan and Graham’s relationship and a talk about teamwork where Epzo sets out his bleak philosophy that trust no one and all men are an island. There’s also some discussion with Anstrom about her home world that suggest that all is not well. 

There are ruins, guard robots with lasers, the Doctor lecturing someone – in this case Ryan – about how she never uses guns, and some tunnels. Then we find out what this place is. It was turned into a weapons factory by the Senza. Scientists worked there under duress and they’ve created…well…Desolation. 

One of the things they have created is a floaty papery psychic monster thing that attempts to kill Epzo, who is rescued by Anstrom. These things attack at night. And, of course, the team are forced to go up to the surface at night. Some things in Doctor Who are ordained in advance really. 

In The Acetylene Fields they are attacked. The floaty paper things taunt the group about fear and then refer, when talking to the Doctor, to ‘The Timeless Child’. This may come up again. 

The team drive them off and make it to the Ghost Monument. But there is no TARDIS. The Doctor encourages Epzo and Anstrom to claim joint victory, which they do. Ilin is ‘persuaded’. He clicks his fingers and everyone but the Doctor, Graham, Ryan, and Yaz are gone. 

No TARDIS and no way to get home the Doctor has an unusual moment of giving up. But the team refuse to agree. At this point we hear the TARDIS sound and we’re here. Back with the TARDIS. With a new interior, which I’m not sure I like. It’s a bit dark and miserable for my liking. But perhaps I’ll get used to it. 

I always think if my review is mostly me talking through the story something is missing that means I didn't get deeply involved. This isn't a bad story, but I think two stories in some flaws are emerging in the Chibnall era. Chibnall’s writing has a certain lack of nuance. He's one for spelling things out as obviously as possible, which can be irritating as hell. Lectures get given. I could be making leaps of judgment too early, but we'll see. 

What this story does do is give us a little breathing space to start getting to know the TARDIS crew a little better. I’m still enjoying Whittaker's performance. I really like Graham, but perhaps that’s because I’m near to his age now that to any of the other companions. Ryan and Yaz are still at an early stage. We know the least amount Yaz. But the chemistry between the four of them is excellent. I’m still not happy with the size of the team, but it works for this story, I think. 

I assume the Senza are being set up as these seasons big bad. They’re behind the weapon’s factory; they’re the ones who have invade Anstrom’s world. We shall see. 

We move on.

The Woman Who Fell To Earth

 

A new era begins. Chris Chibnall has taken over as showrunner but more importantly (sorry Chris) Jodie Whittaker is now Doctor Who. Or The Doctor. 

I haven’t watched this for a couple of years, and I enjoyed it a lot this time around. I think it might be the best introductory episode of a new Doctor in the post-2005 era. There, I said it. 

It is nice that this story takes place in Sheffield and not London. It’s nice for Doctor Who Britain to be more than just the tourist version. 

First episodes of new Doctors are always more about getting to know the new Doctor than the plot itself. It is interesting then that we don’t see Jodie Whittaker for the first ten minutes of the story. Instead, we meet Ryan Sinclair (Tosin Cole) and then after a short little monologue that sets us up with some nice assumption, we see him trying to learn to ride a bike at 19. Ryan has dyspraxia, which may or may not become a thing in the series.  His grandma Grace (Sharon D Clarke) and her second husband Graham O’Brien (Bradley Walsh). They’re trying to encourage him. Ryan won’t call Graham grandad. Frustrated he throws his bike over the cliff and down into some woods. 

Graham and Grace must head off to catch a train and Ryan goes to get his bike. That search leads to some interaction with something alien and then another alien thing appears. A big onion like ice cold thing. Ryan calls the Police. 

Which brings us to PC Yasmin Khan (Mandip Gill). She’s a young probationary PC with a desire to do more than just deal with parking disputes. So, they send her to Ryan. Who it turns out went to the same school as Yasmin. 

On the train though something is amiss. A thing crashes through the engine. The train screams to a halt. Some passengers jump off and head into the night, but Grace, Graham, and Karl (Johnny Dixon) get trapped. A sparking tentacular thing is coming down the train and then… 

The Doctor drops in. Through the roof. 

It’s an impressive entrance. 

Jodie Whittaker is a ball of face scrunching energy from the off. I like the fact they let her stick with her own accent too. There’s something very endearing about Jodie Whittaker. 

The tentacular ball disappears but not before zapping everyone with – it will turn out – DNA bombs. An ugly way to dispose of witnesses. Why they don’t just try to kill everyone is moot. There must be a reason. 

When they go to find the cold onion thing. It is gone. 

It’s been taken by Asif, whose sister disappeared seven years ago. Asif thinks this object will help him answer the question of what happened to her. Well, it turns out what happened to her was a Stenza warrior. Like the one that pops out of the onion. This warrior kills Asif and we will find out rips out one of his teeth. 

This it will turn out the Stenza push into their own faces as a trophy. So, when our alien warrior, whose name is Tzim-Sha, takes of his mask his face is full of teeth. Which suggests he’s killed a lot of creatures. It will turn of Tzim-Sha (who the Doctor winds up by calling Tim Shaw) is here to hunt. His target is Karl. 

Whilst investigating at Asif’s the Doctor takes time to build herself a new sonic screwdriver out of bits and bobs and Sheffield steel. 

Her memory is still not what it was though and she still finding herself. Whittaker gets a nice little speech about what regeneration is like, which she delivers well. 

The rest of the story is a traditional Doctor Who monster hunt until near the end. In the final confrontation – high on cranes because Karl works as a crane operator – the Doctor gets a bit of an unsubtle speech about change, which is well-delivered but is obviously aimed at the watching audience trying to deal with a new female Doctor. She’s switched the DNA bombs from her to Tim Shaw and activates them and throws the recall device at him. Karl kicks him off the crane as he goes. 

The Doctor tells Karl he had no right to do that. Now, forgive a little foreshadowing, but this is going to be one problem I have with this era of Doctor Who. The Doctor has just activated DNA bombs in Tim Shaw. Then she gets snotty with Karl who has been terrifyingly chased down by an alien monster for booting him off the crane. What right does the Doctor have to tell him off? It just feels wrong. 

In the process of this fight though Grace has fallen to her death. 

The rest of the episode is taken up with the consequences of that. We see that Ryan’s Dad isn’t there and Graham makes a speech, which Bradley Walsh delivers rather nicely. Then the Doctor gets to pick her outfit. 

I have failed to note that the Doctor has lost her TARDIS. She fell out of it as it dematerialised. She is using Stenza technology to build a transport device to take her where the TARDIS last was. Yaz, Ryan, and Graham have been helping her, but she is intending to go off alone. 

Except it doesn’t quite work out like that. 

As I said I enjoyed this a lot. The central performances are all great. I feel comfortable with Jodie Whittaker as the new Doctor. I don’t think she’s quite found her feet yet but the initial stumbling about is fun to watch. Ryan, Yaz and Graham are an interesting trio. Has the TARDIS ever had a more diverse crew? I’m not sure though if a TARDIS crew of four is too many. We shall see. 

Yes, Tim Shaw isn’t the most terrifying of villains, but he’s only supposed to be a minor problem so we can get to know the new team. There is though something genuinely disturbing about the tooth thing. Also, and it goes by almost unremarked, it seems like the Stenza take their hunt back to their home planet and put them in stasis once they ripped their tooth out. Which means there are people rotting away somewhere. I suspect that’s something the Doctor would want to look at. The Stenza don’t seem to have a problem killing other people along the way and leaving them for dead so I’m idly curious about how it all works. 

A good start to the new era. Let’s see how it all beds in.

Twice Upon A Time

 

We reach the end of the Peter Capaldi era. But in our end is our beginning and so we start with William Hartnell in the Tenth Planet before he morphs into David Bradley. Bradley, of course, had played William Hartnell in ‘An Adventure in Space and Time’ so casting him as the actual First Doctor is clearly a sensible choice. I’d not been that impressed with the bits of Bradley doing the First Doctor even though I though he was an excellent Hartnell so I was a little worried but I think he’s pretty good in this story. He’s not doing William Hartnell doing the Doctor now. He giving us his own First Doctor.

 I do have some quibbles with some of the dialogue he’s given though. The First Doctor is made out to be a sexist twat, which I know is kind of a joke to acknowledge that the times they have a-changed but they just land badly for me. However, I like that they top and tail the first Doctor’s story with footage of William Hartnell himself. Plus there’s something very Doctor Who about starting a story with a caption ‘709 episodes ago.’ 

Both Doctors are refusing to regenerate. Each has their own reasons. But something goes wrong with time and a World War One officer turns up in the Arctic too. An officer who is being chased by something. This officer is played by Mark Gatiss and I enjoy his performance in this. There something rather true in the soft spoken, frightened but accepting Officer. 

They escape in the Twelfth Doctor’s TARDIS, which is parked 70 yards from the First Doctor’s TARDIS. This allows us a bit of comic breathing space as the Officer enters the TARDIS and the First Doctor gets to be unhappy with the new TARDIS interior. The banter between incarnations of the Doctor is always one of the joys of multi-Doctor stories and mostly it is enjoyable here. Mostly. 

They are captured and pulled into a spaceship that belongs to Testimony. About which we know nothing and who will matter very little. They demand The Officer’s return. The interactions here are great and Bill Potts returns. Sort of. It’s again filled with fantastic clashes of style between the First and Twelfth Doctors. We also get to see The Doctor described as ‘The Doctor of War’, which means one thing here but we will come to see means something different later in the story. 

The thing about Twice Upon a Time is that the story isn’t grand scale. There’s no end of the world/universe style shenanigans it is just a story about memories and friendship. Or not giving up and carrying on. 

The Doctors eventually get to the bottom of what is happening and return our Officer to his soon to be death. But The Doctor has tweaked things a little and time doesn’t quite happen as it was supposed to. We find out the Officer’s identity at this point, which wasn’t a huge surprise but I won’t spoil here. Even though I’ve spoiled loads of stuff throughout this blog.

The last chunk of the story is endings. First the First Doctor’s departure and regeneration. He’s off to find out whether the Twelfth Doctor will regenerate. The long way round, of course. 

Then we get the farewell to the Twelfth Doctor. Bill Potts appears again. Sort of. So does Nardole. And so does Clara. Returning the Doctor’s full memories to him before the end of his life. Capaldi plays all this rather wonderfully. 

We always knew he was going to regenerate in the end, but the begrudging way he excuses it to himself is nicely done. He gets a final monologue before his final line. I have never felt more that a Doctor’s final line is both a fictional final line and a real life final line. Peter Capaldi was a Doctor Who fan and playing the Doctor meant a lot to him, but I think once he was done, he was done. And ‘Doctor, I let you go’ was both for us and for him. 

I have loved Peter Capaldi’s era. My Doctor – as I have said many, many times – will always be Tom Baker but if anyone has ever come closer to stealing my affections it would be Peter Capaldi. Indeed, if it was possible to strip the comfort of nostalgia from Tom Baker it might be that Capaldi would take his place. But I can’t do that. Tom is too wrapped up in my childhood and my life to ever really be superseded. 

So, Doctor I let you go. 

But here comes a new era and in some ways a revolution. Because here comes Jodie Whittaker. The first female Doctor. 

Change my dear…

World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls

 

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.