The Doctor Who Review - S10 E12

Last updated on 8 October 2018

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WARNING! SPOILER ALERT! Welcome back to the Doctor Who Review, where I recap the week’s episode and give some thoughts and opinions on it. Please do not read if you have not seen this week’s episode. There are major spoilers ahead. You have been warned. Check out the rest of the Doctor Who Reviews here.

Title: The Doctor Falls

Written by: Steven Moffat

As children are walking through the country side, they are surrounded by pre-Cyberman looking people tied to posts in the ground like scarecrows, as seen in last week’s episode, World Enough and Time. Ushered in a farm house which looks like an orphanage, the adults barricade the doors and get ready with guns as the scarecrows start towards the farm house. When they’ve sedated them with enough bullets, the people tie them back up on the posts.

A spaceship bursts through the ground and Cyberman-Bill carries an unconscious Doctor from the rubble, as Nardole, Missy and the Master follow behind. After a flashback to fill in the details of how they got there fills the screen, we learn that there was a bit of a fist fight between Twelve and Missy/Master, and the Doctor changed the programming on the Cybermen’s input so now they recognise beings with two hearts as humans too and are coming after the Timelords. They need to escape to higher levels on the spaceship, and so burst through the ground.

‘Two Weeks Later’ we see Human-Bill in a barn, wondering where she is and how she got there. People are scared of her and she doesn’t know why until she sees herself in a mirror and, with a little help from the Doctor, realises she’s been turned into a Cyberman. The scenes of her talking to Twelve flick between Cyberman-Bill and Human-Bill which are done quite nicely.

As the Cybermen continue to evolve, taking years to do so but only days in the time where the team are, the level begins to be attacked. We don’t really know whose side Missy is on, even though the Doctor has spent the entire season trying to get her to calm down and be less Master-evil. The Master, of course, is having none of it, and he and Missy try to head all the way back down to the ground level of the spaceship to get the Master’s TARDIS to get out of there. Unfortunately for both of them, Missy stabs the Master, wanting to stay and help the Doc, knowing the stab will cause him to regenerate into her, but then he blasts her with his sonic and she essentially falls flat, not being able to regenerate again.

Eventually, Nardole gets the people out of there before the Cybermen can get them, Cyberman-Bill and Twelve stay behind to cause as much damage as they can. As they blow up the level to get right of the Cybermen, the Doctor is knocked out. Cybrerman-Bill cries over his body and suddenly out of nowhere pops Heather from the first episode, The Pilot, and turns Cyberman-Bill back into Bill magically, and they grab the Doc and head for the TARDIS.

In the TARDIS, Bill concludes Twelve is dead and she and Heather leave the TARDIS to zoom around the universe together. Doctor wakes up and starts to regenerate but he doesn’t want to and keeps trying to stop it happening. The TARDIS has other ideas, however, and takes him to a cold planet where he steps outside and encounters…himself! The original Doctor, One, steps out of the mist and Boom. There’s the plot for the Christmas episode.

My thoughts on The Doctor Falls

This was an excellent episode and I thought it was a fantastic way to end a series which, let’s face it, had it’s ups and downs.

I loved the little nods to past Doctors throughout the episode, especially when Twelve offers one of the kids a jellybaby, and then later as three Timelords point their Sonic devises at something in the forest – very Ten and Eleven in Day of the Doctor. It all seemed to point to the very surprising, but somewhat expected with those little hints, reappearance of the first generation Doctor on a snowy planet right at the end. The actor in our 2017 episodes (for he’ll be in the Christmas ep for sure), is none other than David Bradley who plays Argus Filtch in the Harry Potter films. They’ve done a great job of making him look so much like the original Doctor, William Hartnell, that at first I thought they were cutting in old footage and had jut revamped it using the powers of technology.

We don’t know why the TARDIS has brought Twelve back to One, or exactly why Twelve is adamant not to regenerate again, but I’m sure all will be revealed in the Christmas episode later this year.

It was awesome to see the Master and Missy team up, and bounce off each other, and while they ended quite meet the end they were hoping, I wouldn’t be surprised if they came back. There wasn’t any final scene of Missy dying, and while we know now how the Master got to be Missy, it wouldn’t be a shock to see another regeneration in the future, despite the fact that it seems off the cards. You just never know with Doctor Who.

Speaking of which, while the switching between Human-Bill and Cyberman-Bill was done excellently, I feel like it was a pick of a cop-out way to get Bill back to normal, with the reappearance of Heather from The Pilot. Yes it was nice that she showed up again, having chased Bill around the universe because she had her tears, and it was all very sentimentally sweet and what have you, but the fact that there was a chance Bill wouldn’t make it out to suddenly being like Heather and almost reset, waaaas a bit lame. Also! In The Pilot, Bill and Heather barely knew each other and actually, why would someone chase someone across the universe for someone they once knew and had a crush on. Like…what.

Speaking of Bill doing weird things, Pearl Mackie’s performance was great as per usual and she’s definitely one of the best aspects of this entire season, but the fact that she just left Twelve ‘dead’ in the TARDIS at the end doesn’t seem very Bill like. Their ‘goodbye’ was rather speedy and I don’t think it was very in character of Bill to just leave him there.

Nardole was a brilliant part of this episode once more, and I can’t help but hope we haven’t seen the last of him.

Overall thoughts on The Doctor Falls

I really enjoyed this episode, except that odd Bill moment, and thought it, along with the previous episode, were up there as the best of the season. While Peter Capaldi has never been my favourite Doctor (David Tennant and Matt Smith get my top rankings), I will be sorry to him go. I’ve gotten used to him and I feel like it was just yesterday he was rocking his hilarious hair in his first season 8 episode, Deep Breath.

So it’s been an up and down season for sure, but this double-episode ending ended the season well. I’m looking forward to the announcement of the Thirteenth Doctor, and while there have been rumours going around for months about who it will be, there haven’t been official confirmations as of yet.

What did you think of The Doctor Falls? Or this season overall?